A robot built at MIT has reportedly set a world speed record for solving a Rubik's Cube, cutting the previous record of 0.637 seconds (set by another robot in 2016) down to just 0.38 seconds. If robots had grandparents, this one's would be very proud.
The Rubik's-solving robot was constructed at MIT this January by Ben Katz, a mechanical engineering graduate student, and Jared Di Carlo, an electrical engineering and computer science student, at a student-run hacker lab. According to a news release from MIT, the two became inspired when they noticed a design flaw in footage of the previous robot record-holder, a compact sphere of whirling motors created by German engineer Albert Beer. [Super-Intelligent Machines: 7 Robotic Futures]
"We watched the videos of the previous robots, and we noticed that the motors were not the fastest that could be used," Di Carlo said in a statement. "We thought we could do better with improved motors and controls."
In their new speed-solving bot, Katz and Di Carlo engineered individual motors to control six metal rods gripping the cube's six faces. Two webcams send footage of the cube to a nearby computer, helping the robot identify which colors fall on which face of the cube at a given time. Working from this information, the robot solves the cube with an algorithm previously used in other Rubik's-solving robots.
In the video above, you can see the whole process in action — just don't blink.
While our fleshy human fingers cannot hope to best the whirling motors and metal grips of robots like these, professional human speedcubers have set some pretty mind-boggling speed records of their own. The current world speed record for solving a Rubik's Cube is held by SeungBeom Cho, who solved a jumbled cube in 4.59 seconds at a 2007 World Cube Organization competition. According to the Rubik's Cube community Ruwix.com, Cho beat the previous world record by just one-tenth of a second.
Members of the machine uprising resistance movement, take heart: Although robots may be much faster than humans at solving Rubik's cubes, flipping hamburgers and climbing up sheer vertical walls, they still look ridiculous trying to open doors.
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