CS340 Lab 2 - Informed Searching

You will use the “Searches” module of the AI program to answer the following questions.  Give clear and complete written answers.

1. Solve the Romanian search problem with iterative deepening, greedy, and A* searches. Watch the values in the queue carefully so that you understand what is happening. Which algorithms give an optimal solution?

2. Select the Route Finding (Random Cities) problem. This will randomly generate 10 cities with roads connecting them with random costs. You will use the Compare Search Algorithms portion of the module to compare “No Duplicates Breadth First Search”, “No Cycles Depth First Search”, and “A* Search”. The search compare will compare these algorithms on the identical 10 problems, giving the number of problems that were solved, the average cost, the average path length, and the average number of nodes expanded. Make a predication of how these algorithms will behave and then check out your prediction. Explain why you think you got the results that you did.

3. Now select the 8 Puzzle problem. You will be given two possible heuristics for the A* algorithm, Manhattan distance and Number of Misplaced Tiles. Which heuristic do you think will perform better and why? Test out your prediction and explain why you got the results that you did.