How Fast Rubik?

US researchers developed a robot that solves a Rubik’s cube puzzle in .38 seconds.

17:58 12 March 2018

US-based researchers have developed a robot that solves a Rubik’s cube puzzle in just .38 seconds, beating the current world record of 0.637 seconds set by German engineer Albert Beer and his robot Sub1 Reloaded.

 

The researchers were able to solve the puzzle more quickly by using a different type of motor in their robot, which used two PlayStation Eye Cameras from the old PS3 console.

 

Jared Di Carlo, who collaborated with Ben Katz, a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to create the robot, said: "We noticed that all of the fast Rubik's Cube solvers were using stepper motors and thought that we could do better if we used better motors," 

 

Mr. Katz added that the 0.38 seconds included “image capture and computation time, as well as actually moving the cube.”