SEARCH IN STATE SPACES
State Space search is a concept where in the problem is solved based on the assessment of steps that may lead to the final or desired solution
To get the insight view of the concept, consider an example of ‘farmer’ who wants to transport wolf, sheep and grass across the river one at a time. If not dealt with utmost care, the sheep may eat the grass and wolf may eat the sheep.
In this particular situation, the state is defined as the positions of the farmer, wolf, sheep and grass. The evaluator can move to any of these states provided that the Move is permitted i.e., moving should not result in anything being eaten.
In this problem, all the states are linked with each other. Thus, the solution to the problem is a list f linked state moving from the initial state to the final state.
The required state can be obtained by employing any of the following techniques,
- Depth first search
- Breadth first search
The structure of state space search corresponds to the structure of problem being solved in two different ways. They are,
- By making use of some legal operations, it enables to define a problem in order to convert the given situation into the desired solution.
- It enables to define the procedure of solving a problem. Usually this procedure is a combination of known techniques and search
Advantages of State Space Search
- It is very much useful in finding the solutions to the toughest problems
- It is widely used in artificial intelligence.
