Algorithms of Planning as State-Space Search (Forward and Backward Search)

Duration: 5 min

This video lesson is available to enrolled students.

Return to /learn/UPPSC-POLYTECHNIC-LECTURER-2025-CS/paper-2-artificial-intelligence/artificial-intelligence-planning/state-space-planning-approaches/asset-algorithms-of-planning-as-state-space-search-forward-and-backward-search after enrolling

Inside: a video lesson and guided study material.

Module outline

  1. About Course: UPPSC Course Overview
  2. Interview Preparation & Guidance: Interview Preparation
  3. Paper 1 | General Hindi: भाषा, लिपि, ध्वनि, वर्ण, अक्षर, स्वर, व्यंजन, मात्रा और संयुक्ताक्षर, वर्तनी, वर्ण-विन्यास, अनुस्वार, अनुनासिक, चंद्रबिंदु और ‘र’ के रूप, शब्द, पद और शब्द-भेद, संज्ञा और सर्वनाम, विशेषण और क्रिया, लिंग, वचन, पुरुष और कारक, काल, वाच्य, वाक्य और वाक्य-भेद, वर्णमाला, समास, संधि, विलोम शब्द, पर्यायवाची शब्द, सामान्य अशुद्धियाँ, अनेक शब्दों के लिए एक शब्द, मुहावरे और लोकोक्तियाँ, अपठित गद्यांश और अपठित पद्यांश, Multi-Topic Content (Cross-Concept Material), शब्द-भंडार, वर्ण-विचार, हिन्दी की ध्वनि और स्वनिम व्यवस्था, प्राचीन और मध्यकालीन भारतीय आर्यभाषाएँ, काव्य के लक्षण, हेतु और प्रयोजन, अशुद्धि-शोधन, शब्द-रचना, शब्द-भेद, हिन्दी की रूप रचना, रूप-रचना, हिन्दी शब्द रचना, हिन्दी साहित्येतिहास दर्शन, भक्तिकालीन काव्यधाराएँ, भारतीय काव्यशास्त्र की परंपरा, भारतीय नवजागरण और स्वाधीनता आंदोलन, अन्य गद्य विधाएँ एवं प्रवासी साहित्य, निर्धारित उपन्यासों का तुलनात्मक अध्ययन, गोदान, हिन्दी कहानी का विकास, स्वातंत्र्योत्तर और नयी कहानी, हिन्दी निबंध का विकास, शुक्लोत्तर निबंध, द्विवेदी और शुक्ल युग के निबंध, हिन्दी की संवैधानिक स्थिति, आधुनिक भारतीय आर्यभाषाएँ और हिन्दी का उद्भव, हिन्दी भाषा प्रयोग के विविध रूप, रीतिकाल, जीवनी, द्विवेदी युग और छायावाद, रीति, वक्रोक्ति और औचित्य सिद्धान्त, शब्दशक्ति और ध्वनि सिद्धान्त, रस सिद्धान्त और साधारणीकरण, उत्तर आधुनिकतावाद, लोहिया दर्शन, हिन्दी उपन्यास का विकास, हिन्दी नवजागरण, अंबेडकर दर्शन, आदिकाल, प्रयोगवाद और नयी कविता, छायावादी काव्य: प्रसाद और निराला, प्रगतिवाद से समकालीन कविता, निर्गुण भक्ति काव्य, द्विवेदीयुगीन काव्य, रीतिकालीन काव्य, आरंभिक हिन्दी उपन्यास, स्वातंत्र्योत्तर उपन्यास, आत्मकथा, स्वाधीनता-पूर्व प्रेमचंदोत्तर उपन्यास, निर्धारित कहानियों का तुलनात्मक अध्ययन, साठोत्तरी नाटक, प्रसाद और प्रसादोत्तर युग के नाटक, भारतेन्दु युगीन नाटक, स्वातंत्र्योत्तर नाटक, भारतेन्दु युगीन निबंध, संस्मरण और रेखाचित्र, व्यंग्य, एक साहित्यिक की डायरी, संस्कृति के चार अध्याय, सगुण भक्ति काव्य, हिन्दी नाटक, एकांकी और रंगमंच, आधुनिक गद्य और हिन्दी नवजागरण, अलंकार सिद्धान्त, हिन्दी आलोचना का विकास, भक्ति आंदोलन, कल्पना, बिम्ब, प्रतीक, मिथक और फंतासी, नयी कविता का विस्तार और साठोत्तरी कविता, उत्तर-छायावादी और प्रगतिवादी काव्य, काव्यगुण और काव्यदोष, प्लेटो, अरस्तू और पाश्चात्य परंपरा, मार्क्सवाद, स्वच्छन्दतावादी काव्यशास्त्र, आधुनिक पाश्चात्य आलोचना, भाषा और भाषा परिवार, देवनागरी लिपि
  4. Paper 2 | General Studies: State Wise GK, Polity, Geography, History, GK- Current Affairs
  5. Paper 1 | Programming Language: Language Design, C Fundamentals, Control Flow, Functions, Arrays & Pointers, Storage Classes, Structures & Enums, DMA, Macros, Scoping & File Handling, OOPS with C++
  6. Paper 1 | Database Management Systems: Basics of DBMS, ER Diagram, Relational Model & Functional Dependencies, Keys & Integrity Constraints, Normalization (1NF - BCNF), Decomposition Properties & 4NF, File Organization & Indexing, Relational Algebra, SQL, Relational Calculus, Transaction Management, Concurrency Control, ORDBMS, NoSQL
  7. Paper 1 | Cyber Security: Society, Law & Ethics, Cyber Threats and Malware Attacks, Role of Internet and Web Services, Security in Mobile and Wireless Computing, Electronic Data Interchange and E-Commerce, Physical Security and Cryptography Basics, Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS), Cyber Safety and Security, Ethical Hacking
  8. Paper 1 | Computer Organization and Architecture: Basics of COA, Programming the Basic Computer, Cache Memory Organization, Input Output Organisation, Instr Formats & Modes, Register Transfer and Microoperations, Control Unit Design
  9. Paper 1 | Computer Networks: Introduction to CN, Data Communication, DLL: Access Control, DLL: Flow Control, DLL: Error Control, DLL: Framing, Data Link Layer - Ethernet, Net Layer: IPv4 & Proto, Net Layer: IP Addressing, Net Layer:Routing Protocol, Transport Layer Services, TL: Congestion & UDP, Application Layer, Hardware basics, Network Security
  10. Paper 1 | Design and Analysis of Algorithms: Algorithm Analysis, Time Complexity Analysis, Sorting Algorithms, Greedy Algorithms, Dynamic Programming, Minimum Spanning Trees, Shortest Path Algos, Advanced Algorithms
  11. Paper 1 | Data Structures: Introduction to DS, Array, Linked List, Stack, Queue, Tree, Graphs, Hashing
  12. Paper 1 | Discrete Structures and Theory of Logic: Permutation and Combination, Set Theory, Relations, Functions, Propositional and Predicate Logic, Graph Theory, Group Theory
  13. Paper 1 | Software Project Management: Software Project Management
  14. Paper 2 | Operating Systems: Introduction to OS, Process Management, CPU Scheduling, Process Synchronization, Threads & Process Creation, Deadlock, Memory Management, Virtual Memory, Disc Scheduling, File Management, Unix OS, Linux OS, Security
  15. Paper 2 | Compiler Design: Intro to Compilers, Lexical Analysis, Grammar & CFG, Syntax Analysis: Top-Down, Syntax Analysis: Bottom-Up, Semantic Analysis & SDT, Intermediate Code Gen, Code Optimization, Run Time Environment, Introduction to TOC, Deterministic FA (DFA), Non-Deterministic FA, Regular Expressions, Pushdown Automata & CFG, Complexity Theory
  16. Paper 2 | Artificial Intelligence & High Performance Computing: Approaches to AI, Search Algorithms, Game Playing, Knowledge Representation, Planning, Multi Agent Systems, Natural Language Processing, Emerging Tech Trends
  17. Paper 2 | Image Processing: Digital Image Fundamentals, Image Enhancement, Image Restoration, Color Image Processing, Image Compression
  18. Paper 2 | Software Engineering: Fundamentals of Software Engineering, Software Requirements and Quality Assurance, Software Design, Estimation and Metrics, Software Testing, Software Maintenance and Configuration Management
  19. Paper 2 | Computer Graphics: Basics of Computer Graphics, 2-D Geometrical Transforms and Viewing, 3-D Object Representation, Geometric Transformations and Viewing
  20. Paper 2 | Web Technologies: Website, Browser & Services, Internet Fundamentals, Web Design & Development, Protocols & Services, Web Publishing & Hosting, Server Side & Security, Emerging Technologies, HTML Basics, JavaScript-Basics, Java
  21. Paper 2 | Soft Computing: Fuzzy Sets, Artificial Neural Networks, Genetic Algorithms
  22. Paper 2 | Distributed System: Distributed Systems
  23. UPPSC Live Class Recordings: UPPSC Polytechnic Lecturer 2025 (CS)
  24. Previous Year Papers:
  25. Mock Test:
AI summary & chapters

AI Summary

An AI-generated summary of this video lecture.

The video lecture provides a comprehensive overview of algorithms for planning as state-space search, primarily comparing forward and backward search strategies. It begins by defining Forward (progression) state-space search, where the process involves choosing an action whose preconditions are met until a goal state is reached. The instructor visually reinforces this concept by writing "initial state," "actions," "preconditions," and "goal" on the slide to map the progression. A significant portion of this section is dedicated to explaining why forward search is often considered too inefficient for practical use. The instructor highlights that it is prone to exploring irrelevant actions. To illustrate this, she presents a specific example: buying a copy of "AI: A Modern Approach" from an online bookseller. The action schema Buy(isbn) with effect Own(isbn) is analyzed. Since ISBNs are 10 digits long, this single action schema represents 10 billion ground actions. The slide text notes that an uninformed forward-search algorithm would have to start enumerating these 10 billion actions to find one that leads to the goal, demonstrating the computational burden. The lecture continues by discussing the structural challenges of forward search. The slide states that planning problems often have large state spaces, leading to huge branching factors. A diagram is shown illustrating a state space tree where nodes branch out significantly, visually representing the explosion of possibilities. This leads to the introduction of Backward (regression) relevant-states search. In this approach, the search starts at the goal and applies actions backward until a sequence of steps reaches the initial state. The instructor draws a diagram showing the flow from "Goal" to "Initial" in a "reverse direction." This method is called relevant-states search because it only considers actions that are relevant to the goal or current state. The slide text asserts that backward search keeps the branching factor lower than forward search for most problem domains. However, a critical limitation is noted: backward search uses state sets rather than individual states, making it harder to come up with good heuristics. This difficulty is cited as the main reason why the majority of current systems favor forward search. Finally, the video briefly introduces Linear Planning. The slide defines the basic idea as working on one goal until it is completely solved before moving on to the next goal, with the planning algorithm maintaining a goal stack. The implications listed are that there is no interleaving of goal achievement and that it is an efficient search method if goals do not interact much. This section serves as a concluding point on simplifying planning strategies.

Chapters

  1. 0:00 – 2:00 00:00-02:00

    The video introduces Forward (progression) state-space search. The slide text explains that in forward search, we choose an action whose preconditions are met until a goal state is reached. The instructor writes "initial state," "actions," "preconditions," and "goal" on the slide to illustrate the flow. She mentions that forward search is assumed to be too inefficient because it is prone to exploring irrelevant actions. She gives an example of buying a book with an ISBN. The action schema Buy(isbn) has an effect Own(isbn). Since ISBNs are 10 digits, there are 10 billion ground actions. An uninformed forward search would have to enumerate these 10 billion actions.

  2. 2:00 – 5:00 02:00-05:00

    The slide continues discussing the inefficiency of forward search. It mentions "Planning problems often have large state spaces" and "Thus forward approach can have a huge branching factors." A diagram shows a state space tree with branching factors. Then the topic shifts to "Backward (regression) relevant-states search". The text says we start at the goal and apply actions backward until we reach the initial state. It's called relevant-states search because we only consider actions relevant to the goal. The instructor draws a diagram showing "Goal" -> "Initial" with "Action -> reverse direction". She writes "Relevant" and "Irrelevant" to explain that backward search filters out irrelevant actions. The slide then mentions "Backward search keeps the branching factor lower than forward search, for most problem domains." However, it notes that backward search uses state sets rather than individual states, making heuristics harder. This is why most systems favor forward search.

  3. 5:00 – 5:15 05:00-05:15

    The slide changes to "Linear Planning: The Basic Idea behind linear planning in AI is - Work on one goal until completely solved before moving on to the next goal. The Planning Algorithm Maintains Goal Stack". It lists implications: "No interleaving of goal achievement" and "Efficient search if goals do not interact (much)".

The lecture progresses from defining forward search and its inefficiencies due to large branching factors and irrelevant actions, to introducing backward search as a solution that reduces branching by focusing on relevant states. It concludes by briefly mentioning linear planning as a strategy to manage goal interactions.

Loading lesson…