Partial-expansion A* with selective node generation

Ariel Felner, Meir Goldenberg, Guni Sharon, Roni Stern, Tal Beja, Nathan Sturtevant, Jonathan Schaeffer, Robert C. Holte

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

A* is often described as being 'optimal', in that it expands the minimum number of unique nodes. But, A* may generate many extra nodes which are never expanded. This is a performance loss, especially when the branching factor is large. Partial Expansion A* (PEA*) (Yoshizumi, Miura, and Ishida 2000) addresses this problem when expanding a node, n, by generating all the children of n but only storing children with the same f-cost as n. n is re-inserted into the OPEN list, but with the f-cost of the next best child. This paper introduces an enhanced version of PEA* (EPEA*). Given a priori domain knowledge, EPEA* generates only the children with the same f-cost as the parent. EPEA* is generalized to its iterative-deepening variant, EPE-IDA*. For some domains, these algorithms yield substantial performance improvements. State-of-the-art results were obtained for the pancake puzzle and for some multi-agent pathfinding instances. Drawbacks of EPEA* are also discussed.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationAAAI-12 / IAAI-12 - Proceedings of the 26th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the 24th Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Conference
Pages471-477
Number of pages7
StatePublished - 2012
Externally publishedYes
Event26th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the 24th Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Conference, AAAI-12 / IAAI-12 - Toronto, ON, Canada
Duration: 22 Jul 201226 Jul 2012

Publication series

NameProceedings of the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Volume1

Conference

Conference26th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the 24th Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Conference, AAAI-12 / IAAI-12
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityToronto, ON
Period22/07/1226/07/12

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Artificial Intelligence

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