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Android Phone Solves Rubik's Cube In 12.5 Seconds
DeviceGuru writes "A Lego Mindstorms robotics kit controlled by an HTC Nexus One smartphone successfully untangled a Rubik's Cube puzzle in 12.5 seconds at this weeks ARM technical conference in Silicon Valley. The current 3x3x3 cube-solvers's 15-second average represents a substantial improvement over the 25-second solutions of an earlier version, which was powered by a circa-2006 Nokia N95 smartphone, thanks to a faster (1GHz) CPU, more RAM, and revamped cube-solving algorithms. ARM Engineer David Gilday, who created the robotic cube-solver, claims the current version's algorithms can handle cube complexities up to 100x100x100, assuming he build the mechanics. In terms of racing humans, Gilday says the Lego robotics kits can only manage around 1.5 moves per second, whereas human players can make between 5 and 6 moves per second, amazingly enough." Update: 11/12 03:45 GMT by T : Apologies to creator David Gilday, whose name was earlier misspelled.
I remember reading countless iphone stories which were completely pointless - anything done over iphone has been reported as some sort of nerd news on /. - and it was a good indication of rabid hype of otherwise ordinary electronic device.
Now we see similarly pointless Android stories.
This can only mean one thing - Android has arrived.
Maybe I'm just missing the excitement of this, but architecture aside, we know Rubik's cubes have predestined, mathematical (logical) approach to solving them, so really having any computational device (even like a microcontroller) can do that. I'd like to people fine-tune the robotic mechanics around turning and changing the cube, so it can start rivaling human solving speeds. I think that's were the feat would get a lot more interesting than seeing the next xyz-embedded computing device controlling another Lego Mindstorm.
I'll take you as trying to troll, but the old adage "It is not the destination but the journey" seems to fit in this case.
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