When Lego Meet Rubik

Credit goes to memepool for bringing you word of Lego robot that solves Rubik's Cubes. This is one of the most jaw-dropping things I've ever seen. Dedication is defined as rebuilding "left and right grabbers six times (and the bottom grabber four times) trying elastic bands, Technic shocks, and pneumatics" in order to grasp that little cube.

Comments

And don't forget the lubricant

[gserafini]

Silicone spray helps those cubes go round and round. Check out the winner of the Swedish world championship and his speed cubing site complete with java 3d cube solution applets!

How about a Lego PDA?

[xmark]

Most of the astonishment comes from the Lego-bot's ability to physically manipulate the cube. However (sniff), the thinking is done on a PC. Can you imagine how Charles Babbage would have approached the problem? (Babbage's 19th Century Analytical Engine was a fully mechanical computer based on brass, not silicon.) He probably would figure out how to encode the lookup table and operators in plastic, not silicon.

OK, I'm just jealous 'cuz my Lego mass spectrum analyzer isn't working yet. :-)

Re:That's the hard way of solving the RB

[Komi]

Given the time energy and persistence most people will put into the cube, this is no different than the real cube.

Actually it's almost more clever than solving the cube itself. I know several people (including myself) who can solve a Rubik's Cube, but all of them (including myself) learned how to solve it by reading the solution out of a book, or off the web. But since this was something new, it took real ingenuity to figure it out.

Hofstadter (in Metamagical Themas) points out how damn clever the internal mechanism is

You should see the 4x4x4 and 5x5x5 cubes. The 5x5 has a similar mechanism to the 3x3 because it has a central square on each side. But it has to hold in more edge pieces and eight middle pieces surrounding the center square.

The 4x4x4 is a totally different mechanism, since it has no middle square. It's core is a ball with grooves in it, and all the pieces can slide around on it. (Note: Don't try to picture it based on my description. You'd have to open one up to really find out.)

And in response to your parent post, trying to solve a cube that's put together wrong takes about as much time to figure out as it does to solve it. Once you're putting the final pieces in place you notice that one piece is rotated in a way it shouldn't be. Then you know immediately it's impossible.

Komi

Re:Why is this suprising?

[Ronin Developer]

In 1980, I had written a cube solver for the TRS-80. It took several minutes to enter the data for each face and then 20 seconds to run with a resulting solution around 40 moves.

My HS nerdy friends and I would have contents on who could solve the puzzle the fastest. By hand, I could solve the puzzle, if I remember correctly, in under a minute.

Drove my parents nuts in the car with its incidious grinding noise. But, silicon spray was a bad idea....the solvent that held the silicon disolved the cube's plastic workings. We opted to open it up, squirt in a glob of Vaseline, put it back together, work with it a while, and then wipe of the excess. My cube, now twenty years old still spins smoothly (but doesn't get used much anymore).

homemade solver

[Pink Daisy]

I've some friends who built a similar machine, but with more primitive construction materials. They did it for a second year design course at the University of Toronto. Details available here.