Foundations of Artificial Intelligence : INTRODUCTION TO STATE SPACE SEARCH

 A goal directed agent needs to achieve certain goals. Such an agent selects its actions based on the goal it has.  Many problems can be represented as a set of states and a set of rules of how one state is transformed to another.  Each state is an abstract representation of the agent's environment.  It is an abstraction that denotes a configuration of the agent.  Initial state : The description of the starting configuration of the agent.  An action/ operator takes the agent from one state to another state.  A state can have a number of successor states.  A plan is a sequence of actions.  A goal is a description of a set of desirable states of the world.  Goal states are often specified by a goal test which any goal state must satisfy.