Robot smashes Rubik’s Cube record with 0.38-second solve

Rubik's Cube record.

Hardware hackers Ben Katz and Jared Di Carlo have smashed the previous record for solving the Rubik's cube robotically. Their machine solved the puzzle in 0.38 seconds-a 40-percent improvement over the previous record of 0.637.

"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," Di Carlo wrote in a blog post.

A custom-built motor controller allows a single turn of the Rubik's Cube to be completed in around 10 milliseconds. With a a typical Rubik's Cube solution taking 19 to 23 turns, that should allow a cube to be solved in around 0.25 seconds-but the pair say the current iteration of the machine makes a move every 15 milliseconds instead.

Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments