Heuristic search viewed as path finding in a graph

Abstract

This paper presents a particular model of heuristic search as a path-finding problem in a directed graph. A class of graph-searching procedures is described which uses a heuristic function to guide search. Heuristic functions are estimates of the number of edges that remain to be traversed in reaching a goal node. A number of theoretical results for this model, and the intuition for these results, are presented. They relate the efficiency of search to the accuracy of the heuristic function. The results also explore efficiency as a consequence of the reliance or weight placed on the heuristics used. © 1970.