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World's Fastest Rubik's Cube Solving Robot [video]

88 points| prawn | 10 years ago |youtube.com | reply

42 comments

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[+] Gravityloss|10 years ago|reply
More like a machine, not a robot. One of the traditionally viewed differences between industrial machine automation and robot automation is that robots are relatively general and can be repurposed.

Think of wiring vs software.

I would think a real robot solving a cube would perhaps at least have to pick it up and put it back down after solving.

[+] erikpukinskis|10 years ago|reply
> robots are relatively general and can be repurposed.

I see your point, but I'm not sure that's a good definition. It's a very fuzzy line. Is a Roomba a robot? It's not a general purpose device.

I've always found it difficult to define intelligence in any useful way, but when I think about it I usually come to the conclusion that it's almost indistinguishable from adaptation, which is easier to define. And adaptation is sort of an interesting line to use for the machine/robot distinction. Machines do work, but robots adapt?

By that definition the Roomba is a robot... it will adapt to foreign objects you place in front of it. This Rubiks machine can adapt to different configurations. But there is a small finite space of scenarios it can adapt to.

So maybe that's it. How many states can you adapt to? If not very many, you're a machine. If quite a lot, you're a robot!

[+] DrScump|10 years ago|reply
Why is it always solved in the same final orientation? (red to near left, blue to near right, ...)

It would seem to me that from a truly random start point to the truly fewest-moves solution, the colors would end up facing random orientations for each run.

[+] Flockster|10 years ago|reply
Because within the cube, the centerpieces are fixed to a core. And because these define the orientation of the cube and are fixed within the robot you end up having the same orientation every time. This happens with every solving robot that only turns the outer layers of the cube, meaning the inner layers and therefore the centerpieces do not move.
[+] mangeletti|10 years ago|reply
Because the machine doesn't rotate the whole cube like a human would during solving.

The middle piece on each side of a Rubik's Cube doesn't move. The machine rotates each side via the drilled holes in each side's middle piece.

[+] ng-user|10 years ago|reply
I remember seeing this a couple days ago and they said they had tried not to modify the cube but weren't able to get the right amount of leverage needed to rotate it and thus insisted on drilling into each center piece. Don't think it still counts, pretty cool set up none the less.
[+] hamitron|10 years ago|reply
its really awesome what they accomplished, but does the drilling diminish the achievement?
[+] lisper|10 years ago|reply
I think so. It's no different from, say, painting a line down the center of the pavement to help an "autonomous car" navigate. The only reason building a robot to solve a physical Rubik's cube is interesting at all is that manipulating a real cube with something like a human hand is hard. Turning something by connecting a motor directly to is is not interesting.
[+] trevyn|10 years ago|reply
Yes! ;)

I wonder if suction cups under high vacuum could work.

[+] udev|10 years ago|reply
This is one of those cases that neatly separates the (ivory-tower) academic types from the (getting-hands-dirty) engineer types of people.

People who say that drilling the wholes in the cube diminishes the achievement, the perfect-or-nothing crowd, belong to the first group.

People who see the drilling of holes as a valid tradeoff to achieve higher performance are more pragmatic and belong to the second group.

[+] cjfont|10 years ago|reply
This doesn't seem to be a question of pragmatism -- they're going for a world record, not trying to solve a practical problem. I'm no expert on this, but it seems to me like the criteria for obtaining a world record title would include not modifying the object used. To me this is like trying to beat the record for furthest soccer ball kick by modifying the materials used in the soccer ball.
[+] captn3m0|10 years ago|reply
As someone who solves cubes and is a "get-shit-done" engineer, I think its not as neat as you make it sound. I'm horrified by the drilled holes, but amazed at the build and engineering.
[+] vernie|10 years ago|reply
It'd be even faster to solve a simulation of a cube.
[+] apalmer|10 years ago|reply
once you can modify the cube you basically break the whole point of this excersize. I mean almost all the kids i knew who messed with these when i was a younging would pull the cube apart and then put it back together in the correct shape, or take off the stickers and stick them back...

doesnt really count...

[+] chbrown|10 years ago|reply
After frustratedly fixing an unsolvable Rubik's cube over Christmas break (my dad thought it'd be funny to "solve" it by peeling off the labels and putting them back on, but got tired halfway through and left it in an unsolvable configuration), I'd love to see what their robot does if you give it an unsolvable cube.
[+] Levex|10 years ago|reply
It would most likely not do anything at all. As the Rubik's solving algorithm should return null (if not stuck in an infinite loop).
[+] uxcn|10 years ago|reply
How are times compared for rubik's cube bots? I would guess there's some variance even for the same bot solving the same cube from the same state.

It might be interesting to see a competition based on number of moves.

[+] tetraodonpuffer|10 years ago|reply
what would be interesting is if there was a category where the robot solver has to grab the cube from the table, analyze it, solve it, and put it back on the table in the same spot, would be cool to see the compromises that would have to be made for speed of transfer/analysis vs speed of solving
[+] lutusp|10 years ago|reply
Yes, true, but consider the fact that, at the moment, the best robots in the world still can't fold a towel without enormous effort.

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/05/19/407736307/robot...

My point is that the intelligence required to pick up the cube and manipulate it, might require more processing power than solving it when attached to a frame.