Brothers build a robot to solve Rubik’s cubes in record-setting time
In the United Kingdom, two brothers have officially broken the Guinness World Record for the fastest time to solve a four-by-four Rubik’s Cube with a robot. Their DIY machine, which the brothers call The Revenger, completed the puzzle in just 45.3 seconds. That’s 33 seconds faster than the next fastest robot. If that wasn’t enough, the record of 45.3 seconds actually beats the record of 55 seconds set by their own robot a few tries earlier.
Not too bad for two undergraduates.
The Revenger sets the world record for a 4×4 cube-solving robot
Matthew and Thomas Pidden built their robot in 15 weeks during Matthew’s time at the University of Bristol. The robot consists of two parts: a physical body and a software component. A pair of dual webcams scan the cube, while two custom-made robotic arms grasp and manipulate it. A nearby laptop runs a specially coded algorithm (essentially the robot’s brain) that analyzes data from webcams and quickly calculates how to move the cube. During testing, the webcams were blocked by a pair of plastic shutters until the timer started, to ensure the machine didn’t get ahead of itself.
The robot’s attempts to break the record took place last year at university, but were just made official by Guinness World Records this week.
“I decided to break the record as part of my undergraduate final project,” Matthew Pidden told the Guinness Book of World Records. “As a child, I always enjoyed Rubik’s Cubes and computers. Combining the two seemed like a natural progression and a great project.”
Related: [The inventor of the Rubik’s cube doesn’t get why it’s so popular]
The Pidden brothers’ robot completed the cube a total of six times. However, it was not an immediate success. The first two attempts failed to beat the previous world record, but the third broke it in 55 seconds. Even then, the brothers were convinced there was still more to their robot. After further attempts, he broke the current record of 45.3 seconds on the sixth attempt. A crowd attending the event cheered in the background, as each of the cube’s faces displayed a single color.
Robots Solving Cubes Even Faster
If 45 seconds seems a bit slow for the fastest robot-solved Rubik’s Cube ever, your eyes are not deceiving you. This file is specifically intended for 4x4x4 cube. The original 3x3x3 Rubik’s Cube, invented by Hungarian sculptor Ernő Rubik in 1974, was solved much faster. We’re talking about a fraction of a second. Currently, the world record for the fastest time a robot has managed to solve is 0.103 seconds, faster than the blink of an eye. This feat was accomplished by a team of engineering students from Purdue University.
In contrast, the fastest time for a human to solve an original Rubik’s cube is 2.76 seconds. Sure, it might be a bit slower, but it’s still pretty impressive for a human. Even more so if we consider that humans were just 9 years old.
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