Heuristic Search in Bounded-depth Trees: Best-Leaf-First Search

Many combinatorial optimization and constraint satisfaction problems can be formulated as a search for the best leaf in a tree of bounded depth. When exhaustive enumeration is infeasible, a rational strategy visits leaves in increasing order of predicted cost. Previous systematic algorithms for this setting follow predetermined search orders, making strong implicit assumptions about predicted cost and using problem-specific information inefficiently. We introduce a framework, bestleaf-first search (BLFS), that employs an explicit model of leaf cost. BLFS is complete and visits leaves in an order that efficiently approximates increasing predicted cost. Different algorithms can be derived by incorporating different sources of information into the cost model. We show how previous algorithms are special cases of BLFS. We also demonstrate how BLFS can derive a problem-specific model during the search itself. Empirical results on latin square completion, binary CSPs, and number partitioning problems suggest that, even with simple cost models, BLFS yields competitive or superior performance and is more robust than previous methods. BLFS can be seen as a model-based extension of iterativedeepening A*, and thus it unifies search for combinatorial optimization and constraint satisfaction with traditional AI heuristic search for shortest-path problems.