Hill Climbing Algorithm In AI Simple Hill Climbing Algorithm Steepest Ascent Hill Climbing Algorithm
Channel: Department of Computer Engineering
Date: 2022-03-21

Hill Climbing Algorithm in Artificial Intelligence

    Hill climbing algorithm is a local search algorithm which continuously moves in the direction of increasing elevation/value to find the peak of the mountain or best solution to the problem. It terminates when it reaches a peak value where no neighbor has a higher value.
    Hill climbing algorithm is a technique which is used for optimizing the mathematical problems. One of the widely discussed examples of Hill climbing algorithm is Traveling-salesman Problem in which we need to minimize the distance traveled by the salesman.
    It is also called greedy local search as it only looks to its good immediate neighbor state and not beyond that.
    A node of hill climbing algorithm has two components which are state and value.
    Hill Climbing is mostly used when a good heuristic is available.
    In this algorithm, we don't need to maintain and handle the search tree or graph as it only keeps a single current state.
Features of Hill Climbing:

Following are some main features of Hill Climbing Algorithm:

    Generate and Test variant: Hill Climbing is the variant of Generate and Test method. The Generate and Test method produce feedback which helps to decide which direction to move in the search space.
    Greedy approach: Hill-climbing algorithm search moves in the direction which optimizes the cost.
    No backtracking: It does not backtrack the search space, as it does not remember the previous states.
Different regions in the state space landscape:

Local Maximum: Local maximum is a state which is better than its neighbor states, but there is also another state which is higher than it.

Global Maximum: Global maximum is the best possible state of state space landscape. It has the highest value of objective function.

Current state: It is a state in a landscape diagram where an agent is currently present.

Flat local maximum: It is a flat space in the landscape where all the neighbor states of current states have the same value.


Shoulder: It is a plateau region which has an uphill edge.
1. Simple Hill Climbing:

Simple hill climbing is the simplest way to implement a hill climbing algorithm. It only evaluates the neighbor node state at a time and selects the first one which optimizes current cost and set it as a current state. It only checks it's one successor state, and if it finds better than the current state, then move else be in the same state. This algorithm has the following features:

    Less time consuming
    Less optimal solution and the solution is not guaranteed

Algorithm for Simple Hill Climbing:

    Step 1: Evaluate the initial state, if it is goal state then return success and Stop.
    Step 2: Loop Until a solution is found or there is no new operator left to apply.
    Step 3: Select and apply an operator to the current state.
    Step 4: Check new state:
        If it is goal state, then return success and quit.
        Else if it is better than the current state then assign new state as a current state.
        Else if not better than the current state, then return to step2.
    Step 5: Exit.

2. Steepest-Ascent hill climbing:

The steepest-Ascent algorithm is a variation of simple hill climbing algorithm. This algorithm examines all the neighboring nodes of the current state and selects one neighbor node which is closest to the goal state. This algorithm consumes more time as it searches for multiple neighbors
Algorithm for Steepest-Ascent hill climbing:

    Step 1: Evaluate the initial state, if it is goal state then return success and stop, else make current state as initial state.
    Step 2: Loop until a solution is found or the current state does not change.
        Let SUCC be a state such that any successor of the current state will be better than it.
        For each operator that applies to the current state:
            Apply the new operator and generate a new state.
            Evaluate the new state.
            If it is goal state, then return it and quit, else compare it to the SUCC.
            If it is better than SUCC, then set new state as SUCC.
            If the SUCC is better than the current state, then set current state to SUCC.
    Step 5: Exit.