How college students built the fastest Rubik’s Cube-solving robot yet

The student-built Purdubik’s Cube acceptable a caller Guinness World Record by solving a Rubik’s Cube successful conscionable 0.103 seconds. | Photo: Matthew Patrohay / Purdue University

A squad of Purdue University students precocious acceptable a caller Guinness World Record with their customized robot that solved a Rubik's Cube successful conscionable 0.103 seconds. That was astir a 3rd of the clip it took the erstwhile record-setting bot. But the caller grounds wasn't achieved by simply gathering a robot that moves faster. The students utilized a operation of high-speed but low-res camera systems, a cube customized for improved strength, and a peculiar solving method fashionable among quality velocity cubers.

The Rubik's Cube-solving robot arms race kicked disconnected successful 2014, erstwhile a robot called Cubestormer 3 built with Lego Mindstorms parts and a Samsung Galaxy S4 solved the iconic puzzle successful 3.253 seconds - faster than immoderate quality oregon robot could astatine the time. (The existent satellite grounds for a quality solving a Rubik's Cube belongs to Xuanyi Geng, who did it successful conscionable 3.05 seconds.) Over the people of a decade, engineers managed to trim that grounds to conscionable hundreds of milliseconds.

Last May, engineers astatine Mitsubishi Electric successful Japan claimed the satellite grounds with a robot that solved a cube successful 0.305 seconds. The grounds stood for astir a twelvemonth earlier the squad from Purdue's Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer …

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