Searching is the act of trying to find something or someone. One can distinguish between two forms of search. One may search for an item that is known to exist, with the intent to locate it, and one may search for an item whose existence is uncertain, in order to ascertain whether it exists or not. Searching can also be a metaphorical act, most frequently in reference to intangibles such as memories and emotions.Yes, search means a lot of things to many people but in context of Computer Science we usually need to find solution for some well defined problem. It may then appear as search for shortest path through a set of given cities, or search for positions of N queens that staisfies the constraint that no one attacks each other. Search as an activity that we happens in both the world viz, real world and digitial world.
In Artificial intellegence context it might mean of many things to find an action that is to be taken for given set of percepts. So next time you may play games like Othello,Chess or you see computer programs tring to solve Sudoku, Tile Puzzle Probelm chances of a Search Algorithm at work are high.
And I would like to point of some really intresting links and readings for research in area of Artificial Intellgence Search.
Sven Keonig's Publications
Richard Korf's Publications
Decision Making in Artificial Intelligence course at Univ. of Alberta
