Search and Search Spaces

• One thing that is important in programming, and particularly important in many AI systems is searching.
• For example, lab6 has you writing a system that searches through a maze .
• How would you search through this maze?
• This particular problem has several important characteristics.
• Backtracking is important; if you make a wrong choice, you can go back.
• There are a small number of discrete options. It is obvious how to move from one state to the next.
• You can only move directly from one state to a few other ones.
• This is a physical manifestation of searching.
• Other problems can be translated into a state space, and that space can be searched. The search provides the answer.