Your first assignment is a search experiment. You do not have to do any programming, but you will need to collect data while working with the Pathfinder tool. You may use one lab partner, but if you do you must tell me who you worked with and how the work was divided. You each need to do your own write-up.
The Pathfinder tool is located as a windows zip file on Canvas and on-line on the GAME Lab web site http://gamelab.cis.umd.umich.edu/ai-demos/PathFinder/WEBgl/Links to an external site.
In Pathfinder you have the ability to set start points, end points, place obstacles, and terrain difficulty. You can pick the search algorithm and under estimator function. The program shows paths tried and the length of the final path.
Your task is to test each of underestimators with the Depth-First, Breadth-First, Branch and Bound, and A* to see if the underestimator or the algorithm has the most impact on the efficiency of finding the path between the starting and ending points. You need to define at least 3 different test environments to check each combination of search strategy and underestimator.
The write-up for this project is due next week (5/15/20). Your write-up for this project should include 5 non-trivial sections: introduction, procedure, results (graphs and tables expected), discussion, and conclusions. The discussion of your results should include things that went right, things that went wrong, and the conclusions should focus on lessons learned.
Assigned: 5-06-20
Date due: 5-15-20