Lego Robot Solves Any Rubik's Cube In 12 Seconds
kkleiner writes "Cube Stormer is the latest creation from Mike Dobson, aka Robotics Solutions, and not only is it made entirely out of Legos, it can solve any 3x3 Rubik's cube in less than twelve seconds. Often it can finish in less than five! This thing looks bad-ass and is incredible to watch."
The next to last solve (at 41s) takes 21 moves*, and is the only cube claimed to be random... thus, I don't see any dishonesty. It takes around 1.9 seconds to analyze, about 0.4 seconds to reset/process, and the remaining 8+ seconds to solve. Therefore, it makes on average between 2 and 3 turns per second.
Humans do not include inspection time in the speed calculation (at least, that's the case in the accompanying video of the world record). An apples-to-apples comparison, therefore, would be the human time at 7 seconds and the robot at a little over 8. I couldn't follow the world-record video, but I think I saw at least one mistake (a move followed by the opposite move) and a little hesitation. So, you're probably correct in the 3-5 moves per second for humans.
*21 includes twice that the computer simultaneously moves two faces, each counted as two separate moves. 180 degree moves are counted once.
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