A ROBOT made from Lego and powered by a smartphone has beaten the Rubik's Cube-solving record by completing the puzzle in little more than three seconds.
The robot, built by British engineers Mike Dobson and David Gilday, beat the Guinness World Record they set with their previous robot in October 2011. Then, the CubeStormer 2 robot solved the puzzle in 5.27 seconds; the updated CubeStormer 3 managed the same feat in just 3.253 seconds at the Big Bang Fair in Birmingham on Sunday.
A Samsung S4 provides the processing power for the robot, with a custom-built app that takes a picture of the cube and then sends instructions to mechanical arms that twist the rows of the cube until all the sides show matching colours.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Latest Videos From
Inventors Dobson and Gilday said that even they were surprised how quickly their robot was able to solve the puzzle: "We knew CubeStormer 3 had the potential to beat the existing record but with the robot performing physical operations quicker than the human eye can see there's always an element of risk," said Gilday.
"In the end, the hours we spent perfecting the robot and ensuring its motor and intelligence functions were properly synchronized paid off. Our big challenge now is working out if it's possible to make it go even faster," he added.
The Big Bang UK Young Scientists & Engineers Fair is the largest science and engineering convention for young people in Britain.
