A heuristic search strategy for optimization of trade-off cost measures

The problem of optimization in a multiple-cost search space by combining admissible heuristic estimates for the different cost parameters is investigated. The authors propose an algorithm, MULT* for solving trade-off optimization problems for which there are good admissible heuristics available for each of the associated cost parameters. It is shown that MULT* is an admissible algorithm and it has many of the important properties of A*. Conditions are also given under which it is possible to prune paths in the search graph. A method is also given to relax admissibility of the heuristics to have a more efficient version of MULT* with a bounded decrease in solution quality