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Smartphone-powered Lego robot sets Rubik’s Cube world record

Punchkick Interactive
  • Punchkick Interactive
  • March 22, 2014
Smartphone-powered Lego robot sets Rubik’s Cube world record

The world record held by a human for the fastest time to solve a 3x3x3 Rubik’s Cube is 5.55 seconds seconds—and Mats Valk is the champion speedcuber holding that record today. If you’ve never seen a speedcubing competition, check out Valk in his 2013 winning cube-solve here.

Valk’s Rubik’s Cube record was shattered by a Lego robot paired with a Samsung Galaxy S4. Named the Cubestormer 3, the machine was constructed purely to solve Rubik’s Cubes. The time to beat is now 3.253 seconds.

Shown at the Big Bang Fair in Birmingham, UK, co-inventors David Gilday and Mike Dobson tricked out the Cubestormer 3 with an octa-core Galaxy S4—four Cortex-A15 cores and four Cortex-A7 processors—each managing its own Lego Mindstorms actuator. The S4 first analyzes how the cube is arranged, outlines the steps necessary to solve it, and then tells the robot what to do. In a previous iteration, the Cubestormer 2 set the record in 2011 at 5.27 seconds, just squeaking ahead of Valk’s record but still impressive against prior record holders.

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