GP-rush: Using genetic programming to evolve solvers for the rush hour puzzle

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    20 Scopus citations

    Abstract

    We evolve heuristics to guide IDA*search for the 6x6 and 8x8 versions of the Rush Hour puzzle, a PSPACE-Complete problem, for which no efficient solver has yet been reported. No effective heuristic functions are known for this domain, and - before applying any evolutionary thinking - we first devise several novel heuristic measures, which improve (non-evolutionary) search for some instances, but hinder search substantially for many other instances. We then turn to genetic programming (GP) and find that evolution proves immensely efficacious, managing to combine heuristics of such highly variable utility into composites that are nearly always beneficial, and far better than each separate component. GP is thus able to beat both the human player of the game and also the human designers of heuristics.

    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationProceedings of the 11th Annual Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, GECCO-2009
    Pages955-962
    Number of pages8
    DOIs
    StatePublished - 31 Dec 2009
    Event11th Annual Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, GECCO-2009 - Montreal, QC, Canada
    Duration: 8 Jul 200912 Jul 2009

    Publication series

    NameProceedings of the 11th Annual Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, GECCO-2009

    Conference

    Conference11th Annual Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, GECCO-2009
    Country/TerritoryCanada
    CityMontreal, QC
    Period8/07/0912/07/09

    Keywords

    • Genetic programming
    • Heuristics
    • Rush-hour puzzle
    • Single-agent search

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Computational Theory and Mathematics
    • Theoretical Computer Science

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