Search icon CANCEL
Subscription
0
Cart icon
Your Cart (0 item)
Close icon
You have no products in your basket yet
Arrow left icon
Explore Products
Best Sellers
New Releases
Books
Videos
Audiobooks
Learning Hub
Free Learning
Arrow right icon
Arrow up icon
GO TO TOP
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Fundamentals

You're reading from   Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Fundamentals Develop real-world applications powered by the latest AI advances

Arrow left icon
Product type Paperback
Published in Dec 2018
Publisher
ISBN-13 9781789801651
Length 330 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Languages
Arrow right icon
Author (1):
Arrow left icon
Zsolt Nagy Zsolt Nagy
Author Profile Icon Zsolt Nagy
Zsolt Nagy
Arrow right icon
View More author details
Toc

Pathfinding with the A* Algorithm


In the first two topics, we learned how to define an intelligent agent, and how to create a heuristic that guides the agent toward a desired state. We learned that this was not perfect, because at times we ignored a few winning states in favor of a few losing states.

We will now learn a structured and optimal approach so that we can execute a search for finding the shortest path between the current state and the goal state: the A* ("A star" instead of "A asterisk") algorithm:

Figure 2.3: Finding the shortest path in a maze

For a human, it is simple to find the shortest path, by merely looking at the image. We can conclude that there are two potential candidates for the shortest path: route one starts upwards, and route two starts to the left. However, the AI does not know about these options. In fact, the most logical first step for a computer player would be moving to the square denoted by the number 3 in the following diagram:

Why? Because this is the only...

lock icon The rest of the chapter is locked
Register for a free Packt account to unlock a world of extra content!
A free Packt account unlocks extra newsletters, articles, discounted offers, and much more. Start advancing your knowledge today.
Unlock this book and the full library FREE for 7 days
Get unlimited access to 7000+ expert-authored eBooks and videos courses covering every tech area you can think of
Renews at $19.99/month. Cancel anytime
Banner background image