If you've ever picked up a Rubik's cube with no instruction on how to solve one, you know how frustrating and how useless it is to try.
Teenager Lucas Etter holds the world record for fastest Rubik's cube ever solved by a human at just under 5 seconds. And if that weren't enough to discourage Rubik's cube amateurs, now two software engineers have built a robot that can solve one in just under 1.2 seconds.
That would shatter the previous world record for fastest Rubik's cube solved by a robot, which currently stands at 2.4 seconds.
Check out the robot in action:
Software engineers Jay Flatland and Joe Rose built this robotic system that includes a set of cameras, a computer that runs the cube-solving program, and six motorized arms that sit inside a 3D-printed frame that spin the sides of the cube.
The cameras scan the cube, feed that information into a Rubik's cube-solving algorithm called Kociemba, and the algorithm tells the robotic motors a sequence of moves that will quickly solve the cube.
The cube has six holes drilled into its outer faces so that the arms can manipulate it:
After the team covered the cameras and scrambled the cube by hand, the robot actually solved the cube in 1.04 seconds:
If their robot is approved by Guinness World Records representatives, then Flatland and Rose will become record holders. Flatland told NPR that he hopes to be certified by the Guinness World Records next week.
