A team of Perdue university Students recently set a new new Guinness World Record With their custom robots that solved a rubic cube in just 0.103 seconds. It was almost a third time when it took the previous record-setting bot. But the new record was not achieved only by building a robot that moves fast. Students used a combination of high-speed but low-resignation camera systems, a cube adapted to better strength, and a special solution technique popular among cubs of human speed.
Rubik’s Cube-Solving Robot Arms Race Stopped in 2014, when a robot called Cubstormer 3 Built with Lego Mindstorm Parts and a Samsung Galaxy S4 solved the reputed puzzle in 3.253 seconds – faster than any human or robot at that time. (For the current world record A human resolves a rubic cube The Xuanyi belongs to Geng, who did it in only 3.05 seconds.) During a decade, engineers managed to reduce the record, only to hundreds of milliseconds.
Last May, engineers from Mitsubishi Electric in Japan claimed with world records Robot that solves a cube in 0.305 secondsThis record was a record from the team about a year ago from the team from the team from the team of Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering – Junpai Ota, Aden Hurd, Matthew Patroo and Alex Barta. His robot is known as Purdubik’s cube. To move the robot record away from Lego in less than half, and instead, using customized components such as industrial motors. It only went down to 0.103 seconds, however, the team needed to find several new ways to shave the milceconds from the perdue.
“Each robot that has been done by previous world record-holders, has focused on a new thing,” says Pastorhe The verge When MIT grade students broke the record in 2018, they opted for industrial hardware, which used previous record-holders. Mitsubishi Electric chose electric motors that were better suited to the specific task of spinning each side of the cube, rather than that he grows rapidly.
However, the first thing that improved the perdue students was actually the speed that his robot could imagine the fried cube. Human speed cubing contestants are allowed to study a rubic cube before their timer starts, but robot records include the time that it takes to determine the location of all colorful classes. Students used a pair of high-speed machine vision cameras from FLIR, with a resolution of only 720×540 pixels, indicated to resist the corners of the cube. Each camera can see the three sides together during the exposure that lasts less than 10 microsicands.
Although it may seem instantaneous, a camera takes time to process the data coming from the sensor and convert it into a digital picture. Purdubik’s cube uses a custom image detection system that completely leaves the image processing. It only focuses on a very small area what the sensor of each camera sees – a cropped area that has only 128×124 pixels in size – being taken around to reduce the amount of data.
Raw data from the sensor is sent directly to a high-speed color detection system that uses RGB measurements from small sample areas on each category, which determines their color faster than other approaches-even AI.
“It is sometimes slightly less reliable,” lets the parorhe, “but even if it is 90 percent consistent, it is quite good until it is sharp. We really want that speed.”
Despite a lot of hardware on the custom-mead of the perdue robot, the team chose to go with the existing software when it came to find out in the fastest way to solve a fried cube. they used Rob-Twofase of Ellius FranterWhich is a cube-solving algorithm that takes into account the unique abilities of the robot, such as being able to spin two sides of a cube simultaneously.
The team also took advantage of a rubic cube-goodting technique called corner cutting, where you can start turning on one side of the cube, before you turns another side before turning another side. The advantage of this technique is that you are not waiting for one side so that your rotation can be completely eliminated before starting the other. For a brief moment, there is an overlap between the movements of both sides, resulting in a significant time left when you are following a world record.
The challenge with corner cuttings is that if you use too much force (such as a robot capable) and do not do things completely, you can blow physically or even destroy a rubic cube completely. In addition to the time of robot movements and the acceleration of its motors, students had to adapt the cube themselves.
Guinness follows the guidelines of World Records World Cube Association, which has a long list of rules It needs to be followed before recognizing a record. This allows contestants to modify their cube, so until it turns and turns like a standard rubic and turns and each of its six sides has nine colorful squares, each on each side. Apart from plastic, other materials can be used, but color parts require the same texture.
To improve its durability, the Purdue team made the internal structure of their cubes with a strong 3D-affected version made of strong SLS nylon plastic. The WCA also allows the use of lubricants to help cubes more independently, but here it is used for a different reason.
“The cube we use for records is incredibly tight, almost cheerful,” says Patroy. “What we have modified is very difficult. It’s not impossible, but you cannot change it with your fingers. You have to really have to include your wrist in it.” When solving the cube at high speed, the lubricant helps to smooth its movements, while increased stress reduces reversal and controls control, so tricks that saving time such as corner cuttings can be used.
Rapid Saro Motors help reduce the time to solve, but it is not as simple as maximizing their speed and expecting for the best. The cube of purdubik uses six motors attached to the metal shaft that slot in the center of each side of the cube. After testing several different approaches, the team settled on a traposodal motion profile, where Sarvos accelerates up to 12,000,000 °/S2, but close to 3,000,000 degrees/S2, reduces very slow, so the robot can do more accurate positions on each side as it comes at a stop.
Can Purdubik’s cube break the record again? Patrohe believes that this is possible, but it will require a strong cube made of anything other than plastic. “If you were excluding the cube of any type of carbon fiber from the overall application-specific Rubic, I could imagine that you are able to survive at a high speed, and simply will allow you to bring down time as they are able to survive at high speed.”
