An Efficient BDD-based A* Algorithm

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Abstract

In this paper we combine the goal directed search of A* with the ability of BDDs to traverse an exponential number of states in polynomial time. We introduce a new algorithm, SetA*, that generalizes A* to expand sets of states in each iteration. SetA* has substantial advantages over BDDA*, the only previous BDD-based A* implementation we are aware of. Our experimental evaluation proves SetA* to be a powerful search paradigm. For some of the studied problems it outperforms BDDA*, A*, and BDD-based breadth-first search by several orders of magnitude. We believe exploring sets of states to be essential when the heuristic function is weak. For problems with strong heuristics, SetA* efficiently specializes to single-state search and consequently challenges single-state heuristic search in general.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Planning Systems (AIPS-02) Workshop on Planning via Model Checking
Number of pages9
PublisherAAAI Press
Publication date2002
Pages72-80
Publication statusPublished - 2002

Keywords

  • Algorithmic Search
  • Set Expansion
  • Heuristic Function
  • BDD-Based Methods
  • State Space Traversal

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