Artificial Intelligence assignment:

Miscellaneous Assignment: Missionaries and Cannibals.

The missionaries and cannibals problem is usually stated as follows. Three missionaries and three cannibals are on one side of a river, along with a boat that can hold one or two people. Find a way to get everyone to the other side without ever leaving a group of missionaries in one place outnumbered by the cannibals in that place.

This problem is famous in AI because it was the subject of the first paper that approached problem formulation from an analytical viewpoint (Amarel, 1968).

Formulate the problem precisely, making only those distinctions necessary to ensure a valid solution. Draw a diagram of the complete state space.

Hints:

• You will need to come up with an appropriate encoding scheme. Include an explanation of your encoding scheme.
• You can draw the state space diagram on paper, take a picture on your phone, and copy and paste that into a word document.
• Alternatively, you could use software such as draw.io.
• Do a good job on this assignment as your first programming project will be based on it.