ara formal analysis - cmu computer science.pdf

ARA*: Formal Analysis Maxim Likhachev, Geoff Gordon, Sebastian Thrun July 2003 CMU-CS-03-148 School of Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213 Abstract In real world problems, time for deliberation is often limited. Anytime algo- rithms are beneficial in these conditions as they usually find a first, possibly highly suboptimal, solution very fast and then continually work on improv- ing the solution until allocated time expires. While anytime algorithms are popular, existing anytime search methods are unable to provide a measure of goodness of their results. In this paper we propose the ARA* algorithm. ARA* is an anytime heuristic search which tunes its performance bound based on available search time. It starts by finding a suboptimal solution quickly using a loose bound, then tightens the bound progressively as time allows. Given enough time it finds a provably optimal solution. In addition to the theoretical analysis we demonstrate the practical utility of ARA* with experiments on a simulated robot kinematic arm and dynamic path planning problem for an outdoor rover. Keywords: search, anytime search, anytime heuristic search, weighted heuristics, anytime planning 1 Introduction Optimal search is often infeasible for real world problems as we are given a limited amount of time for deliberation and the best solution given the time provided should be found [13]. In these conditions anytime algorithms [4, 8, 16] prove to be useful as they usually find a first, possibly highly suboptimal, solution very fast and then continually work on improving the solution until allocated time expires. Unfortunately, they can rarely provide bounds on the sub-o