Abstract
While most work in heuristic search concentrates on goalspecific heuristics, which estimate the shortest path cost from any state to the goal, we explore all-pair heuristics that estimate distances between all pairs of states. We examine the relationship between these heuristic functions and the shortest distance function they estimate, revealing that all-pair consistent heuristics may violate the triangle inequality. Thus, we introduce a new property for heuristics called ∆-consistency, requiring adherence to the triangle inequality. Additionally, we present a method for transforming standard consistent heuristics to be ∆-consistent, showcasing its benefits through a synthetic example. We then show that common heuristic families inherently exhibit ∆-consistency. This positive finding encourages the use of all-pair consistent heuristics, and prompts further investigation into the optimality of A∗, when given an all-pair heuristic instead of a goal-specific heuristic.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 127-133 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | The International Symposium on Combinatorial Search |
Volume | 17 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 1 Jan 2024 |
Event | 17th International Symposium on Combinatorial Search, SoCS 2024 - Kananaskis, Canada Duration: 6 Jun 2024 → 8 Jun 2024 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Computer Networks and Communications