Using an algorithm portfolio to solve sokoban

Abstract

The game of Sokoban is an interesting platform for algorithm research. It is hard for humans and computers alike. Even small levels can take a lot of computation for all known algorithms. In this paper we will describe how a search based Sokoban solver can be structured and which algorithms can be used to realize each critical part. We implement a variety of those, construct a number of different solvers and combine them into an algorithm portfolio. The solver we construct this way can outperform existing solvers when run in parallel, i.e. our solver with 16 processors outperforms the previous sequential solvers.