State Space Search Revised : Introduction

Many of AI problems can be represented in terms of State Space Theory. State Space search techniques provide the conceptual backbone of almost every approach to the systematic exploration of alternatives. They play a key role in many historically important achievements in areas such as:
Computer games (puzzles, chess, strategic games, etc.) – the IBM program Deep Blue wins against Kasparov on chess (1997);
Planning and scheduling;
Natural Language Processing – program PEGAUSUS for speech recognition in real time and travel reservation;
Automated Reasoning and Theorem Proving – the program EQP solves 60 years unsolved problem (1996);
Computer Vision and Robotics – “No hands across America” – autonomous car control from Pittsburgh to San Diego;
Expert Systems – the real time expert system MARVEL keeps closely a huge data flow sent from the space ship Voyager, solves routine tasks and alarms for a serious problems;
Etc.