### INTELLIGENT AGENTS AND PROBLEM SOLVING
#### Agents and Environment
1. **Agent**: An entity that perceives its environment through sensors and acts
upon it through actuators.
- Example: A robot navigating a room.
2. **Environment**:
- The external context or surroundings within which an agent operates.
- Types of environments:
- Fully Observable vs. Partially Observable
- Deterministic vs. Stochastic
- Static vs. Dynamic
- Discrete vs. Continuous
- Episodic vs. Sequential
3. **Nature of Agents**:
- **Simple Reflex Agents**: Act only on the current percept.
- **Model-Based Agents**: Maintain an internal model of the world.
- **Goal-Based Agents**: Take actions to achieve specific goals.
- **Utility-Based Agents**: Maximize a utility function to choose the best
action.
4. **Problem-Solving Agent**:
- A goal-driven agent that formulates and solves problems to achieve its
objectives.
- Steps in problem-solving:
1. Define the problem.
2. Formulate possible actions.
3. Execute the action plan to achieve the goal.
---
### SEARCH ALGORITHMS
#### Brute Force Search
- **Definition**: Explores all possible solutions to find the optimal one.
- **Advantages**:
- Guarantees finding a solution (if one exists).
- **Disadvantages**:
- Computationally expensive and inefficient for large problem spaces.
---
#### Depth-First Search (DFS)
- **Definition**: Explores as far down a branch as possible before backtracking.
- **Implementation**:
- Uses a stack (either explicitly or via recursion).
- **Advantages**:
- Requires less memory compared to BFS.
- Suitable for deep search spaces with fewer branches.
- **Disadvantages**:
- May get stuck in infinite loops.
- Not guaranteed to find the shortest path.
---
#### Breadth-First Search (BFS)
- **Definition**: Explores all neighbors of a node before moving to the next level.
- **Implementation**:
- Uses a queue.
- **Advantages**:
- Guarantees the shortest path (if all costs are equal).
- **Disadvantages**:
- Requires significant memory for wide or deep search spaces.
---
### HEURISTIC SEARCH ALGORITHMS
#### Hill Climbing Algorithm
- **Definition**: A local search algorithm that moves towards the highest value
(hill) or optimal solution.
- **Variants**:
- Simple Hill Climbing
- Steepest-Ascent Hill Climbing
- Stochastic Hill Climbing
- **Advantages**:
- Easy to implement.
- **Disadvantages**:
- May get stuck in local maxima, plateaus, or ridges.
---
#### Best-First Search
- **Definition**: Expands the most promising node based on a given heuristic.
- **Variants**:
- Greedy Best-First Search: Selects nodes with the lowest estimated cost to goal.
- **Advantages**:
- Efficient in finding solutions for well-defined heuristics.
- **Disadvantages**:
- May not guarantee the optimal solution without proper heuristics.
---
### ADVANCED SEARCH ALGORITHMS
#### A* Algorithm
- **Definition**: Combines the cost to reach a node (\( g(n) \)) and the estimated
cost to reach the goal (\( h(n) \)):
\[
f(n) = g(n) + h(n)
\]
- **Advantages**:
- Guarantees optimal solution (if \( h(n) \) is admissible and consistent).
- Efficient for many problems.
- **Disadvantages**:
- High memory requirements.
---
#### AO* Algorithm
- **Definition**: Solves problems represented as AND-OR graphs by finding the
least-cost solution.
- **Steps**:
1. Start at the root node.
2. Expand nodes using the heuristic evaluation function.
3. Mark nodes as solved if all their children are solved.
- **Applications**:
- Game theory and decision-making problems.
- **Advantages**:
- Handles problems with AND and OR conditions.
---
These algorithms and approaches are fundamental in designing intelligent agents
capable of solving problems efficiently in diverse environments.
