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Saurabh Narain and His Homemade Lego-Based Rubik's Cube Solver (Video)
Here's another one Tim spotted at Maker Faire Bay Area 2014: A Rubik's Cube solver made by 12-year-old Saurabh Narain. He's in 7th grade -- and started soldering in 2nd grade and messing with Linux in 3rd grade. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Tim asked. "An engineer..." (not that you couldn't have guessed). There may be faster Rubik's Cube solvers, and there may be slicker-looking ones, but Saurabh's is a lot more elegant, if you define engineering elegance as getting the most accomplished with the fewest possible parts, using the simplest possible design. And both of the fancier Rubik's Cuber solvers linked to in this paragraph were made by adult engineers, while Saurabh is 12. Can you imagine what he'll be like at 18? Or 28? Not that he's alone; there are lots of other engineering prodigies out there. The next 10 or 20 years are going to be amazing if we encourage young people to go into STEM, and even 5% of them are as smart as Saurabh. (Alternate Video Link)
He will meet a girl and stop caring about building stuff in the basement. There are a lot of child prodigies that don't make it past puberty.
Judging by how awful the job prospects are in STEM relative to the amount of effort being put in, I'm going to hate the world in 10-20 years if the job market becomes even more flooded. Also, I find it incredibly hard to believe that a kid is a competitive engineer at that age, at least based on individual merit. I've seen a lot of smart kids, and then I've seen smart kids who are pushed/enabled by ambitious parents to take more credit than they're due. If I took a shot every time some fifteen year old "scientist" made a significant discovery, I wouldn't be writing frustrated posts on /.
I get it. We can solve it mathematically. We can manipulate them with computers. We can inspect them with optics. We can do this all VERY FAST. That was news 5-10 years ago. There is literally nothing new left in the field.
Not to take away from what this kid did (certainly more than what I did in 7th grade), but it is far from original. I'm not too sure why it is newsworthy.
Similar style of lego rubiks cube solver from 2011 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWkZ51yxvis - and I know similar ones exist from at least that timeframe.
Don't sit through Dice's stupid video ads. Here's the video straight from Narain's YouTube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm9_RRYTpys
He was also 12.
No big deal, maybe we should have flown to the Maker Fair and got ourselves a table
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDk5b3Rx1xE
Not to put this kid down, but that looks awfully similar to the MindCuber design that David Gilday came up with: http://www.mindcuber.com/
-- Nathan
STEM jobs will be all gone in 10 - 20 years, at least in the US. China and India both graduate hugely more engineers than the US does, and they are getting better at it every day. It is only a matter of time before the US is a third or fourth rate country when it comes to STEM education and expertise.
If the US doesn't get off its duff and start getting more competitive by allowing the best and brightest engineers in the world come work here, it will all be over that much faster. We do not own a monopoly on smart. We have to bring it here if we want to keep it.
...and even 5% of them are as smart as Saurabh.
Dream on. I'd bet this kid is at least in the top 0.3%, and maybe higher.
From watching the video he did not come up with the code for this device, but used code someone else wrote. So it is not like he did this from scratch.
Kudos for this kid for completing the project, but it is not quite as impressive as the article made it appear to be.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
It's not "faire", nor "fayre", nor "ye olde fayrie". It's "fair", and you know it is.
An open invitation to extrapolate? Whoa daddy that. Fasten your air-bags, ladies and gentlemen.
Will the clever little rug rat grow up to become the William James of maker-space or William James Sidis of faker-disgrace?
... after all, there are millions living in abject poverty over there. I'm sure us white people can do perfectly well on our own.
Funny how you never see an African 12 year old doing this, isn't it? Anybody got any idea why? Or are we too afraid to tell the truth...
You idiot. Of course they look like the grays since they're gray/ape hybrids. Other human races look different because, gasp, there's more than one alien race out there doing hybrids.
And don't get me started on so-called "Santa Claus"...
"Can you imagine what he'll be like at 18?"
Ability and age tend to not scale linearly. His abilities probably aren't going to change that much from here (he peaked early) and he's not going to amount to much if he can't handle advanced and abstract mathematics.
"...if we encourage young people to go into STEM"
TERRIBLE IDEA! There's already far too much supply for the lack of demand that exists, at least as measured in salaries. As long as we allow desperate, 3rd world coolie laborers to take our technology jobs and thus drive down the salaries, there's no point in anyone bothering to study STEM.
Professor Peter Woit at Columbia comments on the low wages for STEM jobs ( http://www.math.columbia.edu/~... ):
"Pollack repeats the claim of a serious shortage of students in STEM fields:
...Last year, the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology issued an urgent plea for substantial reform if we are to meet the demand for one million more STEM professionals than the United States is currently on track to produce in the next decade....
something which is actually only a shortage of talented people willing to work for low wages."
Not to take away from what this kid did (certainly more than what I did in 7th grade), but it is far from original.
What exactly DID he do? It looks like he simply built a MindCuber and added a few tweaks. This is not at all impressive. The reason I recognized it for what it is is that my 10 year old son did almost exactly the same thing: built the MindCuber from the available instructions and ran the code. It looks like this kid added a few tweaks but other than that it is almost identical to the published plans.
Things are getting really bad if a primary school kid who can build a complex Lego kit from instructions is now such a rarity that it's newsworthy. Now if he had designed and built it from scratch including the algorithm to solve the cube then I would be impressed but building a lego robot from available instructions? Really?
I think you're missing the context. He's showing it off in a Maker's Faire. So it's not as if you're going to see something wildly original.
Having an highly advanced intellect at age 12 is no guarantee of being in the same position 12 years later
I don't think the youngster needs any encouragement to go into STEM. For that matter, I don't think we need to encourage any young people to go into STEM - the field is crowded enough already.
However, for those whose true passion lies in that direction, just stay out of their way.