abstract = "The 8-puzzle problem is a classic artificial
intelligence problem which has been well-researched.
The research in this domain has focused on evaluating
traditional search methods such as the breadth-first
search and the A* algorithm and deriving and testing
various heuristics for use with informed searches to
solve the 8-puzzle problem. The study presented in this
paper evaluates a machine learning technique, namely
genetic programming, as means of solving the 8-puzzle
problem. The genetic programming algorithm uses the
grow method to create an initial population which is
iteratively refined using tournament selection to
choose parents which the reproduction, mutation and
crossover operators are applied to, thereby producing
successive generations. The edit operator has been used
to exert parsimony pressure in order to reduce the size
of solution trees and hence the number of moves to
solve a problem instance. The genetic programming
system was successfully applied to 20 problem instances
of differing difficulty, producing solutions to all 20
problems. Furthermore, for a majority of the problems
the solutions produced solve the problem instance using
the known minimum number of moves.",