# My Rubiks cube solving robot



## Ryouko (Dec 12, 2010)

Hey guys, I have been a member here for a while now and thought you guys might find this cool. 
I am an Electrical and Computer Engineering student and me and my friend made a Rubik's Cube solving robot for a class project. Here is a video of it solving while we still had all of the delays in there, making it take almost 30 seconds to solve.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hk5DFxxTu0

We then took out a lot of the delays getting it to do a complete solve in about 15 seconds. We don't have a good video of that, but here is what my school is showing (I'm the kid on the right that they barely show):
http://www.youtube.com/rowanuniversity#p/u/0/goTn0-20BAE

Before someone asks, it knows the initial position based off of two images stored on my computer, these are processed to find the colors, then it is passed to cube explorer. The output of that is then modified and sent out to the motors and rams.


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## Stefan (Dec 12, 2010)

Very cool. I especially like how open it is, the cube just sitting on a minimal pedestal. I'd be afraid to take the solved cube from it, though, worrying the turning arm might attack my hand


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## cmhardw (Dec 12, 2010)

Very cool robot, and very cool video!


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## Whyusosrs? (Dec 12, 2010)

Very nice! I like how open it is as well. Can your bot scramble the cube as well as solve it? I think a bot that scrambles would be a ton more useful to cubers then one that solves. But yours is much cooler then one that scrambles.


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## bicmedic (Dec 12, 2010)

http://singularityhub.com/2010/02/17/lego-robot-solves-any-rubiks-cube-in-less-than-12-seconds-video/

Boom

5-12 seconds, freaking amazing.


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## ruff48 (Dec 12, 2010)

I don't see why it couldn't scramble, as it solves by using an algorithm, and could simply be told to follow a scramble algorithm.


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## Ryouko (Dec 12, 2010)

Whyusosrs? said:


> Very nice! I like how open it is as well. Can your bot scramble the cube as well as solve it? I think a bot that scrambles would be a ton more useful to cubers then one that solves. But yours is much cooler then one that scrambles.


 
We put in a fixed scramble and solve combination that we use for demos. Since we are using cube explorer there has got to be a way for it to spit out scrambles to the webserver output.


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## Ryouko (Dec 12, 2010)

bicmedic said:


> http://singularityhub.com/2010/02/17/lego-robot-solves-any-rubiks-cube-in-less-than-12-seconds-video/
> 
> Boom
> 
> 5-12 seconds, freaking amazing.



Yeah, we have seen that, it is impressive, But we do have a few things that make ours unique. We hold it from only one corner (I haven't seen that before) and we use a PLC which is normally used for industrial applications.


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## bicmedic (Dec 12, 2010)

Oh, I wasn't belittling yours by any means, they're both pretty impressive.


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## BigSams (Dec 12, 2010)

Felt all warm and fuzzy watching it.
Does using a robot help break in a cube? I've always wanted to customize my cake mix blender (one of these http://www.b2b-trade.net/shops/product/6-Piece-Set-Electric-Hand-Mixer-incl-Fast-Blender.html) so that while something grips into F2L, the blender spins the corresponding LL a million times to break it in. My mom didn't agree.


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## Neo63 (Dec 12, 2010)

Those robots are so much cooler than those Lego Mindstorm robots on youtube. I like the simplicity in the design.


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## Logan (Dec 12, 2010)

BigSams said:


> Felt all warm and fuzzy watching it.
> Does using a robot help break in a cube? I've always wanted to customize my cake mix blender (one of these http://www.b2b-trade.net/shops/product/6-Piece-Set-Electric-Hand-Mixer-incl-Fast-Blender.html) so that while something grips into F2L, the blender spins the corresponding LL a million times to break it in. My mom didn't agree.


 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kIBvAnLevo


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## o2gulo (Dec 14, 2010)

Cool. I'm always fascinated by these things. I always wonder how you program them and design the robot.. etc...










When i first saw that I thought the Rubik's Cube solves the robot. O_O :fp


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## Lucas Garron (Dec 14, 2010)

The creative approaches to turning are getting more and more impressive. Is this the first design with two control arms that doesn't use shoving?
There are enough cube solers out there that this probably merits categorization on a wiki page.


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## BigSams (Dec 14, 2010)

Logan said:


> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kIBvAnLevo


 
Oh. My. God. THAT IS GENIUS. Imma go see if we still have a drill. Dunno where I'll get the "safety gear" though xD. Best of all, I don't have to kill the cake mixer.


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