Rubik’s Cube Record Smashed by College Students

West Lafayette, Indiana —(Map)

Students at Purdue University have created a robot that can solve a Rubik’s Cube faster than any robot ever. The robot, which they call “Purdubik’s Cube”, solves the cube in just 0.103 seconds. That’s faster than the time it takes to blink your eyes.

The Rubik’s Cube was invented in 1974 by Erno Rubik. It rapidly became a popular puzzle worldwide. At first, people just wanted to solve the puzzle. But soon, one group of users had a new goal – to solve the cube as quickly as possible. These people are known as “speedcubers”.

Human speedcubers can solve a Rubik’s Cube in a few seconds. The fastest time is about 3.05 seconds. That’s truly amazing. But thanks to computers and rapidly moving parts, robots can do even better. In 2020, a group of students at MIT set a record with a robot that solved the cube in 0.380 seconds – less than half a second.

The Rubik’s Cube is a popular puzzle. “Speedcubers” try to solve the cube as quickly as possible. Human speedcubers can solve a Rubik’s Cube in a few seconds. The fastest time is about 3.05 seconds. Above, people competing in a speedcubing contest in Bulgaria in May.

That made an impression on Matthew Patrohay, who was in high school at the time. “I thought, ‘That’s a really cool project. I’d love to try and beat it someday,'” said Mr. Patrohay.

Now Mr. Patrohay and three other Purdue students have built a robot that can solve a Rubik’s Cube far faster. Their “Purdubik’s Cube” robot can solve a cube in 0.103 seconds – roughly one-tenth of a second.

Last year, a group of professional engineers working for Mitsubishi set the previous world record with a robot that solved the cube in 0.305 seconds. The robot built by Mr. Patrohay, Aden Hurd, Junpei Ota, and Alex Berta solves the cube nearly three times as fast. That earned it the official Guinness World Record.

The team built the robot as part of a senior project. The students met through a program that helps students get real-world work experience. That program helped them build the skills they needed, and it also helped them get support for their work from outside companies.

Purdubik’s Cube uses cameras and “computer vision” to rapidly detect the colors of each of the cube’s squares. The robot’s computer program uses special strategies to solve the puzzle quickly. And its motions are very precisely controlled.

To work so quickly, the project uses a special cube that sits in the middle of the robot’s “arms”. These arms allow the robot to turn the sides of the cube. But at such high speeds, an ordinary cube falls apart, so the students had to create a stronger cube that would hold together. Mr. Patrohay says the robot is so fast that “before you even realize it’s moving, we’ve solved it.”

Bluetooth technology allows the cube to be scrambled remotely by a user. When it’s completely scrambled, the robot solves the cube almost instantly.

The students won a school design contest last December with Purdubik’s Cube, and they continued to improve the robot after that. Now they’re excited to have broken the world record.

One of the students’ professors says he’s not surprised. “Take brilliant students, give them the tools and opportunities,” he says, “And they’ll blow your mind.”