Title
Pessimistic Heuristics Beat Optimistic Ones in Real-Time Search
Abstract
Admissibility is a desired property of heuristic evaluation functions, because when these heuristics are used with complete search methods, such as A* and RBFS, they guarantee that an optimal solution will be found. Since every optimistic heuristic function is admissible, optimistic functions are widely used. We show, however, that with incomplete, real-time search, optimistic functions lose their appeal, and in fact they may hinder the search under quite reasonable conditions. Under these conditions the exact opposite is to be preferred, i.e. pessimistic heuristic functions that never underestimate the difficulty of the problem. We demonstrate that such heuristics behave better than optimistic ones of equal quality on a standard testbed using RTA* search method.
Year
Venue
Keywords
2006
ECAI
equal quality,optimal solution,pessimistic heuristic function,real-time search,optimistic heuristic function,optimistic function,heuristic evaluation function,complete search method,search method,pessimistic heuristics beat optimistic,exact opposite,real time
Field
DocType
Volume
Heuristic function,Mathematical optimization,Heuristic,Incremental heuristic search,Heuristic evaluation,Computer science,Testbed,Heuristics,Pessimism,Real-time Search
Conference
141
ISSN
ISBN
Citations 
0922-6389
1-58603-642-4
4
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.45
9
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Aleksander Sadikov1539.96
Ivan Bratko21526405.03