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Lego Robot Solves Rubik's Cube Puzzle In 3.253 Seconds
SternisheFan sends this news from CTV:
"The Cubestormer 3 took 18 months to build but only needed 3.253 seconds to solve [a Rubik's cube], breaking the existing record. Unveiled at the Big Bang Fair in Birmingham, U.K., the Cubestormer 3 is constructed from the modular children's building-block toy but uses a Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone with a special ARM chip addition as its brain. It analyzes the muddled-up Rubik's Cube and powers each of the robot's four 'hands,' which spin the cube until all sides are in order. Created by ARM engineer David Gilday and Securi-Plex security systems engineer Mike Dobson, Cubestormer 3's new record shaves just over two seconds off the existing record, set by Cubestormer 2, which the pair also built."
Only if I had four hands ..
Please someone upload an ultra slow motion video of the process!!!
But of course smart enough... LOL
As The boojum said, you can theoretically solve a cube in any configuration in 20 moves, but it might take a long time to find that optimal solution. Computers can quickly find a just-over-20-move not-quite-optimal solution, though.
Human-friendly algorithms generally take over 50 moves, with the absolute best solves still taking more than 40.
I stepped through this video frame by frame. They rotate the cube 5 times to inspect each face first (I guess they only have one camera), paused about 0.2 seconds (presumably to calculate a solution) and then they made 21 moves plus 4 rotations to solve it. (The rotations were necessary because it only has 4 arms and can't spin the top and bottom layers.)
So yeah, looks like they computed a nearly-optimal solution, and I imagine they can probably get a just-over-20-move solution every time.
Finally something really useful from the A.I. community. Everybody should have such a Rubik's Cube solver at home. The DARPA funding for the past 6 decades was not in vain!
I'm impressed that Lego can do such heavy tasks nowadays. I am sure that my old technic Lego blocks would simply have snapped in two under such stresses. However, I think that the new Lego is so customized that there may exist thousands of different blocks, which means you must now design first, and then order the blocks. It's no longer a matter of having a box full of blocks and just start building. It seems also many blocks are specialized and can only be used in one (maybe two) different way(s), whereas I seem to remember that I invented new ways to use my old blocks all the time.
Call me an old fart, but I am not sure all of this is actually progress.
Now THAT is news for nerds!
Generally, contestants for Guinness records are not allowed to measure their own attempt. It appears the timing of the solution was performed by the contestants' gear, which means this is not a legitimate record.
Very impressive! I don’t know much about algorithms and stuff like that but what are the real applications for such an achievement?
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Is it really necessary to scan every face? I'm no expert when it comes to Rubix cubes (I've only ever managed two sides on mine), but isn't a cube similar to a dice where you can look at one side and infer what state the opposite face is in? When the previous machine was heralded here on /. I recall that the Mindstorms robot only looked at 3(?) of the faces. That seems like a while ago so there's a good chance I'm mistaken about that.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
1.532 seconds to 3D print my own at home! Oh 3D printing, so powerful! Where can I download the file?
is a joke. Do you see accountants and lawyers act like goofy 14 year olds like this? No, they're too busy making 3x what engineers earn.
I am afraid other posters have given you the wrong answer.
The longest possible sequence of moves is infinite when the initial state involves swapping two colored stickers.
Source: personal experience.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Try reconfiguring (ie take the stickers off and put them back in diferent places so there is no solution) and then see how the robot does...
Nope, you can have 1 face look a specific way but the "back" face look any number of ways. Heck you can solve for multiple sides and have the rest of a sides still be a mess.
Also the possibility that there is a little person in the box.
Just the fact that you refer to solving two "sides" is proof that you never put in effort to learn how to seriously solve a cube. That's a classic amateur mistake. The traditional way to do it is solve it top layer first, then middle layer, then bottom. There are also corner to corner and other speed methods. Solving it face by face is essentially impossible.
Yes and no - if you solve 5 faces, the 6th must be solved, but if you solve the top two layers and have some edge pieces on the sides showing the bottom color, you don't know which is which. With corners you can infer the color of the third side by knowing any two colors even thought there are two corners with the same pair because in one corner the two colors proceed clockwise and in the other CCW.
Obvious spam is obvious. It's even more lame that it's 30 times the same link.
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Yes, they only have one camera - it's on the smartphone they're using. When you start the machine, the smartphone platform rises, exposing the camera at which point the app snaps photos of the faces.
After snapping photos of all 6 sides, it slides the platform back while calculating the solution (it takes up to 50ms), then it just sends Bluetooth commands to the motors to spin each face.
If they can speed up the optical scan, say get a phone with a faster camera or optimize their scan algorithm, I'm willing to bet they can shave another half second off that time.
Madness.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
If you really want to impress me, build a Lego robot that builds cube-solving Lego robots.
Table-ized A.I.
From a mathematical perspective, "solving" the cube means generating the command sequence. Physicallly manipulating the cube is unrelated. So what's the big deal here. Is it:
a) an algorithm which comes up with a solution of 22 moves every time?
b) an algorithm which does (a) in much less elapsed time than previous algorithms (or CPUs)?
c) Some cool shiny robotic manipulators which can twist a (well greased, well-aligned) Rubik's cube faster than previous manipulators?
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
camera is the sgs4 itself.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
Back in the late 70s/early 80s I figured out a series of rotations that would rotate only 4 center-edge cubes that was very useful in solving the puzzle, but it was incredibly unwieldly, requiring dozens of rotations. I could usually do the whole thing in about 15 minutes. That was good enough for me...
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.