Your fastest Rubik’s Cube solving time could never stand up to this new puzzle-solving machine.
Jay Flatland and Paul Rose uploaded a video to YouTube this month showing off their new robot, which unscrambles a Rubik’s Cube in the blink of an eye. It works by plugging stepper motors affixed to 3D-printed frames into holes drilled into a Rubik’s Cube. Four USB webcams hooked up to a PC scan the cube determine the state of the colors and feed the information through an implementation of the Kociemba Rubik’s cube solving algorithm, which determines what moves are needed to solve the cube very rapidly.
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To test the machine, Flatland covers the cameras to keep them from seeing the cube as he scrambles it completely and randomly. He then loads it into the robot, which solves the cube in just 1.047 seconds.
The duo is applying for a world record for their invention, which leaves the previous machine record of 3.253 in the dust, and the human record of 4.904 even farther behind.
