Uninformed Search Strategies

Uninformed search is a class of general-purpose search algorithms which operates in brute force-way. Uninformed search algorithms do not have additional information about state or search space other than how to traverse the tree, so it is also called blind search. Following are the various types of uninformed search algorithms:

Breadth-first Search: Breadth-first search is the most common search strategy for traversing a tree or graph. This algorithm searches breadthwise in a tree or graph, so it is called breadth-first search. BFS algorithm starts searching from the root node of the tree and expands all successor node at the current level before moving to nodes of next level. The breadth-first search algorithm is an example of a general-graph search algorithm. Breadth-first search implemented using FIFO queue data structure.

Advantages:

• BFS will provide a solution if any solution exists.
• If there are more than one solutions for a given problem, then BFS will provide the minimal solution which requires the least number of steps.

Dis-advantages:

• It requires lots of memory since each level of the tree must be saved into memory to expand the next level.
• BFS needs lots of time if the solution is far away from the root node.

Depth-first Search: Depth-first search isa recursive algorithm for traversing a tree or graph data structure. It is called the depth-first search because it starts from the root node and follows each path to its greatest depth node before moving to the next path. DFS uses a stack data structure for its implementation. The process of the DFS algorithm is similar to the BFS algorithm.

Advantages:

• DFS requires very less memory as it only needs to store a stack of the nodes on the path from root node to the current node.
• It takes less time to reach to the goal node than BFS algorithm (if it traverses in the right path).

Dis-advantages:

• There is the possibility that many states keep re-occurring, and there is no guarantee of finding the solution.
• DFS algorithm goes for deep down searching and sometime it may go to the infinite loop.

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