Bidirectional Heuristic Search

Joseph K Barker

PhD Dissertation 2015


 

Abstract

Bidirectional heuristic search is a well-known technique for solving pathfinding problems. The goal in a pathfinding problem is to find paths—often of lowest cost—between nodes in a graph. Many real-world problems, such as finding the quickest route between two points in a map or measuring the similarity of DNA sequences, can be modeled as pathfinding problems.

Bidirectional brute-force search does simultaneous brute-force searches forward from the initial state and backward from the goal states, finding solutions when both intersect. The idea of adding a heuristic to guide search is an old one, but has not seen widespread use and is generally believed to be ineffective.

I present an intuitive explanation for the ineffectiveness of front-to-end bidirectional heuristic search. Previous work has examined this topic, but mine is the first comprehensive explanation for why most front-to-end bidirectional heuristic search algorithms will usually be outperformed by either unidirectional heuristic or bidirectional brute-force searches. However, I also provide a graph wherein bidirectional heuristic search does outperform both other approaches, as well as real-world problem instances from the road navigation domain. These demonstrate that there can be no general, formal proof of the technique’s ineffectiveness.

 

 

Abstract

We present an intuitive explanation for the limited effectiveness of front-to-end bidirectional heuristic search, supported with extensive evidence from many commonly-studied domains. While previous work has proved the limitations of specific algorithms, we show that any front-to-end bidirectional heuristic search algorithm will likely be dominated by unidirectional heuristic search or bidirectional brute-force search. We also demonstrate a pathological case where bidirectional heuristic search is the dominant algorithm, so a stronger claim cannot be made. Finally, we show that on the four-peg Towers Of Hanoi with arbitrary start and goal states, bidirectional brute-force search outperforms unidirectional heuristic search using pattern-database heuristics.

 

Solving Peg Solitaire with Bidirectional BFIDA*

Joseph K Barker and Richard E Korf

AAAI 2012


Abstract

We present a novel approach to bidirectional breadth-first IDA* (BFIDA*) and demonstrate its effectiveness in the domain of peg solitaire, a simple puzzle. Our approach improves upon unidirectional BFIDA* by usually avoiding the last iteration of search entirely, greatly speeding up search. In addition, we provide a number of improvements specific to peg solitaire. We have improved duplicate-detection in the context of BFIDA*. We have strengthened the heuristic used in the previous state-of-the-art solver. Finally, we use bidirectional search frontiers to provide a stronger technique for pruning unsolvable states. The combination of these approaches allows us to improve over the previous state-of-the-art, often by a two-orders-of-magnitude reduction in search time.

 

Solving Dots-And-Boxes

Joseph K Barker and Richard E Korf

AAAI 2012


 

Dots-And-Boxes is a well-known and widely-played combinatorial game. While the rules of play are very simple, the state space for even very small games is extremely large, and finding the outcome under optimal play is correspondingly hard. In this paper we introduce a Dots-And-Boxes solver which is significantly faster than the current state-of-the-art: over an order-of-magnitude faster on several large problems. Our approach uses Alpha-Beta search and applies a number of techniques—both problem-specific and general—that reduce the search space to a manageable size. Using these techniques, we have determined for the first time that Dots-And-Boxes on a board of 4 × 5 boxes is a tie given optimal play; this is the largest game solved to date.

 

Biasing map matched trajectories based on planned route information

Rohan Abhay Paranjpe, Seth Harris Rubin, Joseph Kelly Barker, Jintao Guan, Karan Rajen Parikh

US Patent US10533862B1


Describes a technique to improve the quality of map matching (aligning the noisy GPS trace of a vehicle’s trajectory) by taking advantage of the route that the driver was using for navigation.