A* Search with More Informed Heuristics Functions

Petri nets have often been used as a tool to model and schedule resource allocation systems (RASs). This chapter presents and evaluates an improved search method in an SC‐net framework. It also presents a method for the A* algorithm within reachability graphs of SC‐nets to simultaneously use several heuristic functions no matter whether they are admissible or inadmissible for RAS scheduling. The procedures of how to combine admissible heuristics and inadmissible heuristics are presented and the properties of the combinational heuristic are given. The method ensures that the combinational heuristic is not only admissible but also more informed than its constituents.