Robot resolves Rubik's Cube in record time
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Robots can beat humans at Jeopardy, fly our planes and even go to war for us, so they'll surely take over the world eventually. First thing's first, though - they'll have to beat our Rubik's Cube record. Oh wait, one just did.
Behold the CubeStormer II, a robot constructed from four lego Mindstorms NXT kits and packed with the processing power of a Samsung Galaxy S II smartphone.
On average, the CSII can crack a Rubik's Cube in six seconds.
In the video below, it can be seen clocking a record of 5.35 seconds - shaving milliseconds off the human-set figure of 5.66s.
Designed and built by the man behind the first - and slower - CubeStormer, Mike Dobson, and by software programmer David Gilday, the CSII is quite the technical achievement.
Sure, the maximum number of face turns needed to solve any instance of the Rubik's Cube puzzle is 20, but to work it out fully, both physically and mentally in such a short amount of time is über spectacular.
With the smartphone's dual-core capabilities, it simultaneously solves the puzzle as signals are sent to ARM processors in each Lego leg. Crazy stuff.
The CubeStormer II will be on show at ARM Techcon 2011 in the US later this month, where squares will rule the show. ®
COMMENTS
"but only after being told how"
Or after the programmer has figured out how and programmed the phone to run the same logic.
Yes, it's a machine that simply does what it's told. Yes, it's not hard for a piece of software to solve a cube. Most innovations (e.g. auto-parking on BMW's) are the same sort of innovation. For goodness sake, see it for what it is... *lego* connected to a mobile *phone* to do something pointless *really* fast.
I want one!
Beer, because these guys deserve one. More than one. But they only have 5.3 seconds to drink them.
Eat that fanbois!
Finally, an application demonstrating how superior Samsung phones are in comparison with fruity ones.
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