Exponential-Binary State-Space Search

Nathan R. Sturtevant, Malte Helmert

Abstract: Iterative deepening search is used in applications where the best cost bound for state-space search is unknown. The iterative deepening process is used to avoid overshooting the appropriate cost bound and doing too much work as a result. However, iterative deepening search also does too much work if the cost bound grows too slowly. This paper proposes a new framework for iterative deepening search called exponential-binary state-space search. The approach interleaves exponential and binary searches to find the desired cost bound, reducing the worst-case overhead from polynomial to logarithmic. Exponential-binary search can be used with bounded depth-first search to improve the worst-case performance of IDA* and with breadth-first heuristic search to improve the worst-case performance of search with inconsistent heuristics.