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A unifying approach to heuristic search

  • Knowledge And Structures: How To Represent, Handle, And Find Knowledge And Insight Into Structure
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Abstract

We present the General Search Procedure (GSP) that provides a unifying way of describing search algorithms. The GSP captures both constructive and iterative search algorithms. We demonstrate as an exercise that various well-known heuristic search procedures can be obtained as instances of the GSP. The introduced formalism provides a solid ground to prove theoretical properties of search methods. Furthermore, by the formal approach we obtain a framework that can serve as the basis of implementing a search based problem solver.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics and Computing Science, Eindhoven University of Technology, POB 513, 5600 M B, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    A. E. Eiben, E. H. L. Aarts, K. M. van Hee & W. P. M. Nuijten

  2. Artificial Intelligence Section, Department of Mathematics and Computing Science, Free University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1801a, 1081 HV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    A. E. Eiben

  3. Philips Research Laboratories, POB 80000, 5600 JA, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    E. H. L. Aarts

Authors
  1. A. E. Eiben
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  2. E. H. L. Aarts
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  3. K. M. van Hee
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  4. W. P. M. Nuijten
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Eiben, A.E., Aarts, E.H.L., van Hee, K.M. et al. A unifying approach to heuristic search. Ann Oper Res 55, 81–99 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02031717

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