We’ve all seen videos of Rubik’s cube champions who can solve the puzzle in less than 5 seconds. And there are cube-twisting robots that can solve the cube even faster, often in under a second. This Rubik’s cube solver is not one of those robots, but it’s still pretty cool.
The reason we like Dexter Industries’ “BricKuber” is not for its lightning speed — it takes a minute or two to solve the puzzle. What we like is the simplicity of the approach to manipulating the cube. Built from LEGO parts, including Mindstorms motors and a BrickPi controller, the BricKuber uses only two motors to work the cube. One motor powers a square turntable upon which the cube sits, while the other powers an arm that does double duty — it either clamps the cube so the turntable can rotate a layer, or it rakes the cube to flip it 90° on the turntable. With a Pi Cam overhead, the rig images all six faces, calculates a solution to the cube, and then flips and twists the cube to solve it. It’s simultaneously mind-boggling and strangely relaxing to watch.
All the code is open source, and we strongly suspect a similar and possibly faster robot could be built without the LEGO parts. You might even be able to build one with popsicle sticks and an Arduino.
Of course another way to solve the puzzle is to peel off the stickers and put them back on in the correct locations. ;-)
how many times can you do that?
Depends how careful you are.
Ideally you would only need to do it once.
I guess, it’s easier to learn the maximum of 20 steps and a little bit of practice to solve every Rubik’s cube within a few seconds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLvuXaRnf-g
Fewest move competitions are performed over an hour of unstructured cube analysis and manipulation and rarely achieve God’s number for 3x3s. The popular speedsolving stragegies (CFOP/Fridrich, Petrus, Roux) use methods that focus on an ordered process of solving via pattern recognition and memorized algorithms. Solving cubes this way typically ranges between 35 and 45 “moves” using a HTM (half-turn-metric) but requires years and years of practice.
In the second video, Dexter says that the BricKuber is based on the mindcuber – http://mindcuber.com/
This design goes back farther, at least as far as 2008, to the Tilted Twister: http://tiltedtwister.com/tiltedtwister2.html
Here is a video published in 2008: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fAn5A0HbhU
How about a Rubik’s Cube Cheater robot that takes the cube apart and reassembles it with all the colors matching?
Harder than just solving the cube legit? For a robot, I mean.
Very clever!