There can be one or many solutions to a given problem, depending on the scenario, As there can be many ways to solve that problem. Think about how do you approach a problem. Lets say you need to do something straight forward like a math multiplication. Clearly there is one correct solution, but many algorithms to multiply, depending on the size of the input. Now, take a more complicated problem, like playing a game(imagine your favorite game, chess, poker, call of duty, DOTA, anything..).

The subject of game AI generally begins with so-called perfect information games. These are turn-based games where the players have no information hidden from each other and there is no element of chance in the game mechanics (such as by rolling dice or drawing cards from a shuffled deck). Tic Tac Toe, Connect 4, Checkers, Reversi, Chess, and Go are all games of this type. Because everything in this type of game is fully determined, a tree can, in theory, be constructed that contains all possible outcomes, and a value assigned corresponding to a win or a loss for one of the players. Finding the best possible play, then, is a matter of doing a search on the tree, with the method of choice at each level alternating between picking the maximum value and picking the minimum value, matching the different players' conflicting goals, as the search proceeds down the tree.

The two bought a generic cube puzzle, since it was looser and would slide easier. They then placed different textured items on each side. One side was left smooth and the other had plastic squares. Another side had scratchy Velcro and the opposite had soft Velcro. The final two sides had squishy craft dots and hard plastic dots.

In this paper, the problem of maximizing a black-box function $f:\mathcal{X} \to \mathbb{R}$ is studied in the Bayesian framework with a Gaussian Process (GP) prior. In particular, a new algorithm for this problem is proposed, and high probability bounds on its simple and cumulative regret are established. The query point selection rule in most existing methods involves an exhaustive search over an increasingly fine sequence of uniform discretizations of $\mathcal{X}$. The proposed algorithm, in contrast, adaptively refines $\mathcal{X}$ which leads to a lower computational complexity, particularly when $\mathcal{X}$ is a subset of a high dimensional Euclidean space. In addition to the computational gains, sufficient conditions are identified under which the regret bounds of the new algorithm improve upon the known results. Finally an extension of the algorithm to the case of contextual bandits is proposed, and high probability bounds on the contextual regret are presented.

We consider an extension of the set covering problem (SCP) introducing (i)~multicover and (ii)~generalized upper bound (GUB)~constraints. For the conventional SCP, the pricing method has been introduced to reduce the size of instances, and several efficient heuristic algorithms based on such reduction techniques have been developed to solve large-scale instances. However, GUB constraints often make the pricing method less effective, because they often prevent solutions from containing highly evaluated variables together. To overcome this problem, we develop heuristic algorithms to reduce the size of instances, in which new evaluation schemes of variables are introduced taking account of GUB constraints. We also develop an efficient implementation of a 2-flip neighborhood local search algorithm that reduces the number of candidates in the neighborhood without sacrificing the solution quality. In order to guide the search to visit a wide variety of good solutions, we also introduce a path relinking method that generates new solutions by combining two or more solutions obtained so far. According to computational comparison on benchmark instances, the proposed method succeeds in selecting a small number of promising variables properly and performs quite effectively even for large-scale instances having hard GUB constraints.

To fully appreciate Professor Pearl's book, begin with a careful reading of the title. It is a book about "..Intelligent- ..Strategies.." for the discovery and use of "Heuristics.. " to allow computers to solve ".. Search.. ' ' problems. Search is a critical component in AI programs (Nilsson 1980, Barr and Feigenbaum 1982), and in this sense Pearl's book is a strong contribution to the field of AI. It serves as an excellent reference for the researcher/practitioner and is useful as a textbook as well. As a book about search, it is thorough, at the state of the art, and contains expositions that will delight the expert with their clarity and depth.

Planning domains often feature subproblems such as route planning and resource handling. Using static domain analysis techniques, we have been able to identify certain commonly occurring subproblems within planning domains, making it possible to abstract these subproblems from the overall goals of the planner and deploy specialized technology to handle them in a way integrated with the broader planning activities. Although such strategies can be impressive when applied to toy domains, they cannot address highly structured problem domains effectively. However, when knowledge-sparse approaches are supplemented by domain knowledge, they can perform impressively (Bacchus and Kabanza 2000) at the cost of an increased representation burden on the domain designer.

How did TALPLANNER come about? TAL serves as a reference formalism for We use a simple gripper domain as an example. ROBBY only has a single gripper. For many domains, the process is intuitive and straightforward. We imagine that for other domains, the process will be quite complex, and finding a means of automatically generating at least some of the control statements is highly desirable and a challenging research issue.

Preventive-maintenance schedules occurring in industry are often suboptimal with regard to maintenance coallocation, loss-of-production costs, and availability. We describe the implementation and deployment of a software decision support tool for the maintenance planning of gas turbines, with the goal of reducing the direct maintenance costs and the often costly production losses during maintenance down time. The optimization problem is formally defined, and we argue that the feasibility version is NPcomplete. We outline a heuristic algorithm that can quickly solve the problem for practical purposes and validate the approach on a real-world scenario based on an oil production facility. We also compare the performance of our algorithm with results from using integer programming and discuss the deployment of the application.

Department of Computer Science Rutgers Universaty New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903 Abstract In this article we discuss a method for learning useful conditions on the application of operators during heuristic search Since learning is not attempted until a complete solution path has been found for a problem, credit for correct moves and blame for incorrect moves is easily assigned We review four learning systems that have incorporated similar techniques to learn in the domains of algebra, symbolic integration, and puzzle-solving We conclude that the basic approach of learning from solution paths can be applied t,o any situation in which problems can be solved by sequential search Finally, we examine some potential difficulties that may arise in more complex domains, and suggest some possible extensions for dealing with them. PEOPLE LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE, and for the past 25 years, Artificial Intelligence researchers have been attempting to replicate this process. In t,his article we focus on learning in domains where search is involved. Furthermore, we will restrict our attention t,o cases in which the legal operators for a task are known, and the learning task is to determine the conditions under which those operators can be usefully applied. Once such a set of heuristically useful conditions has been discovered, search will be directed down profitable We would like to thank Jaime Carbonell and Hans Berliner for helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.