That's ridiculously impressive, actually. This machine doesn't just SOLVE in that time, it also analyzes, which is something record holders do beforehand.

Will you ever publish the instructions and program? I would love to have one to show off to my friends and family! Thanks!

Dear David Gilday, It is a privilege to have met you today, . Thanks for talking to us about Rubik cube. It was very inspiring.

It's my own two-phase table-driven algorithm that I developed originally for Yellow Cube Machine and enhanced for Android Speedcuber and then CubeStormer II. Running on the dual-core Cortex-A9 processor is can typically find 10 to 15 solutions of around 21 moves in around 200ms and selects the one which will be fastest for the mechanics (not necessarily the one with the fewest moves)

Damn! I sneezed and missed the part where it solves the cube.

the only way i could solve a rubic is by smashing it and putting back the pieces together. or retaping the bits with colors.

@215alessio

10 жыл бұрын

7BeAsT9 all i know is the mid color on each surface is the fixed one and around it you must complete it. but anyway I don't start to solve it. It's a nut job! I have an autstic neighbour and he digs it every time if he has nothing todo. i scramble the colors and he solves it. and he enjoys it. I hate those cubes.

@wowonice1 Thanks :D As it turns out, the rules used by Guinness World Records for robot solves require that the "inspection" time be included. This seems fair to me since part of the challenge is to write software to calculate a good solution as quickly as possible. The algorithm I wrote for CubeStormer II typically finds a solution of about 21 moves in around 200ms on the Galaxy S II. It does not simply look for one with the fewest moves but finds one optimised for the robot's mechanics ;-)

Good idea. Several people (including Mike and I) have thought about only scanning 5 faces. However, there are some scrambled positions where knowing 5 faces does not provide enough information to determine the 6th. For example, consider a cube which is solved apart from 4 edge pieces around one face. If all of these edge pieces are twisted by 180 degrees and the 5 faces excluding this one face are known, it is not possible to tell whether any of the four edge pieces have also been exchanged.

00:18 those little robot arms lifting that cube up all dramatic-like. Priceless.

In order to ensure that CubeStormer II works reliably in different lighting conditions it checks after the scan that the colors form a valid, solvable position before attempting the solve. This check will detect if two pieces cave been exchanged or if a corner or edge have been rotated making the puzzle impossible to solve. In this case it just stops after the scan with a message about the error.

CubeStormer II turns over the cube twice while taking pictures of all six sides during the first second after the cube is lowered and the timer starts. You can see the live image from the smartphone's camera on the screen during this scan period. The solution is then calculated in about 200ms and the physical solve starts at about 1.2s into the total solve time.

Nice work Mike and David !!

Very impressive, I saw this via a link posted in the UK and then run from here in the US. Sure has some folks looking at it. Great work.

Lusky is the artist name, "Superhero" is the song title. The song itself is available on iStockAudio, but that's presumably for use in videos only, because the cost for the song is too high for it to be just for the song/file. That being said, I haven't found any other source for the song yet, but it might be out there.

@Antprie Just to dispel any doubts, Cubestormer II s now the official world record holder, for a "Robot 3x3x3 cube Solve" Weighing in at a "human beating" 5.27 seconds for a WCA scrambled cube (which includes the scan time. )Many thanks to the guys at GWR for their attendance at Wired Magazine Offices in London 11 th Nov 2011

@EnigmaticProcession I've developed all my own algorithms for solving the Rubik's Cube and larger cubes in my spare time over the last three or four years. At first they were straightforward extensions to the method I worked out to solve the puzzle myself when the cube became available back in about 1980. The algorithm we use for CubeStormer II is based on an advanced, two-phase algorithm that I developed for my Yellow Cube Machine and Android Speedcuber robots.

sooo friggin cool...hats off to the designers!!!

I could watch this all day.

@OktoberSunset yes, there are a lot of great LEGO solvers out there including at least one RCX solver and I created a single NXT-only solver ("MindCuber"). It's good to hear that you are inspired. Do have a go yourself - it's great fun! :-)

@spyxter after scanning the cube, CubeStormer II checks that the result is a valid combination of colors before attempting to solve it. If it isn't, then the cube is simply raised out of the robot with a message on the smartphone screen indicating that a rescan is required and the 3D graphical cube on the display indicates the colors that were observed.

Thanks. The algorithm finds solutions averaging about 21 moves. The solutions are not necessarily those with the fewest moves, but are optimized for speed taking into account the mechanical design to try and minimize the overall time by reducing the number of tilts as well (rotations as you called them).

Purpose built machines can generally outperform humans and robots, nice job!

DAYUM! If there's anything cooler than a 3D printer built out of Legos... IT'S THIS! You should be designing models for Lego!

The NXTs are programmed to perform the motor control in the NXC language using BricxCC. The Android app running on the phone which controls the camera and has the solving algorithm is written in a combination of Java and C++ using the Android SDK and Android NDK. The app communicates with the program running on one of the NXTs by sending messages over Bluetooth. Thanks

@mrhugoty CubeStormer II only turns over the entire cube during the first second while the camera is on so it can take pictures of each of the 6 faces of the cube. It does not turn any faces during this period. The software turns off the camera and then starts calculating the complete solution to the puzzle before it starts to turn the faces to solve the puzzle.

@MycroDomin it's a table-driven two-phase algorithm that I developed myself originally for my Yellow Cube Machine and refined for Android Speedcuber and then CubeStormer II

The grips rotate around a fixed technic axle, the open/close servo pushes/pulls this axle to open/close the fingers using a series of levers within the body of the grip. :)

The Guinness World Record rules for robot solvers stipulate that the time measured is the total time to inspect and solve the cube unlike the WCA rules for humans which, as you observe, allow up to 15 seconds of inspection before the solve which is not included. This made it even more fun for Mike and I to try and minimize the robot scan and calculation time as well as the physical solve! ;-) The Guinness World Record rules use the WCA rules for scrambling the cube beforehand. Thanks

That has to be one of the coolest robots I have ever seen... Now I'm influenced to get into robotics. ._____.

@zero2zero4 I believe it does match. I suspect that there may be some confusion because the orientation of the cube on the phone does not match the orientation of the physical cube and also that the cube in CubeStormer II is illuminated by a blue light so some pieces often look a different color, particularly on the vertical face underneath the smartphone.

I think this just shows how amazing it is that the human world record is only 0.35 seconds slower than a freaking robot programmed specifically to solve the Rubik's cube

This rubik cube solver starts counting time as part of the inspection, if you watch, the first 6 flips of the rubik cube, no turns are done. So really, this machine solves it in under 4.5 seconds. Pretty genius. Any way the rest of us with smartphones and NXT kits can get the build instructions on this bad boy to build one ourselves?

@ultimatelighting or did I misunderstand your question - were you asking how the software on the phone communicates with the NXT? If so, the answer is by using bluetooth to access the NXT "mailbox" or "message" queues. LEGO provide some documentation about the bluetooth data formats required to do this on their MINDSTORMS site.

I developed my own two-phase, table driven multi-threaded algorithm that can find short solutions with an average of around 21 moves. The solution is optimized for the mechanical capabilities of CubeStormer II. It uses about 150ms of processing time on the dual-core ARM processor in the Galaxy S II smartphone.

@ssrc thanks for this explanation. Yes, Mike did use CubeExplorer for the original CubeStormer but CubeStormer II uses my own two-phase solver that I wrote and developed originally for the Android Speedcuber robot ;-)

@zero2zero4 it seemed natural for the software to turn off the camera as soon as the scan has finished and switch to the graphical representation of the cube during the software calculation and physical solve as this clearly indicates when the images from the camera are actually being used for the inspection. And yes, I agree that it looks cooler with the 3D rotation too :)

Thanks :-) The motor control software running on the NXTs is written in a C-like language called NXC and the Android App on the smartphone is written in a combination of Java for the graphics, communication and user interface and C++ for the solving algorithm itself.

@akheron0 no, the two-phase algorithm I developed is quite different from Kociemba's. The lookup tables for the algorithm are preloaded into the RAM on the smartphone.

@psion0027 Wrong. When the real-time video of the cube is displayed on the phone the scanning process is occurring and the timer is counting. Therefore it DOES count the time during scanning!

This is a very interesting robot, incredible engineering and programming. One improvement suggestion though: Humans are allowed to inspect it off the clock, I think you should take full advantage of that. As you probably also know, any cube can be solved in 20 moves. It doesn't take 15 seconds to document the color positions, and you could take the rest of the 15 sec to calculate the 20 move solve. I think this could knock ~1.5-2 seconds off the solve! Great machine, deserving of respect. :D

There are one or two things we did not implement in CSII which would have helped reduce its "average solve time" but we are talking about a couple of 10ths of a second improvement at best.

There is an algorithm for solving the rubix cube and there are ways to implement it into the nxt, there are plenty of bots out there that analyse and solve cubes. In a really small nutshell, what they did was modify that algorithm to allow their mean machine to take full advantage of its 4 arms thus allowing faster solving. Somehow they made the Samsung Galaxy S2 analyse the cube in that first second, calculate the fastest way to solve the cube and send the propper instructions to the nxt.

@MrTerrorsmiley It's custom app called "CubeStormer II" written specifically for this robot and has not been released

The humans race is now free from the drudgery of Rubik's cube solving! In all seriousness that's an impressive machine.

i have no idea what kind of genius you are.

I love how when it finished solving it it brings the cube back up like: "Behold. I have done the impossible in five seconds."

Thanks. Yes, the main limitation is the physical speed with which the LEGO motors and construction can manipulate the cube. Obviously, if all movements could be 20% faster it would save about 1s overall. It ought to be possible to increase the speed using more motors to provide greater torque, but I suspect the strength and rigidity of the LEGO grips might then become a limiting factor. Mike (if you're reading this) what do you think? :-)

This is awesome in so many kind of ways.

Wow! I'm impressed! Well done!

The cube was already scrambled before I made the turns to scramble it further. It looks from the video as though I actually did about 18 more turns. If you are still not convinced that the cube was properly scrambled in this video, please search for other videos of CubeStormer II demonstrated live at exhibitions and on the RoboticSolutions, Guinness World Records and Wired KZread channels. Thanks

@mrhugoty you might consider this is already a blindfold solve as the scan and software solve time are included and the camera is turned off before the mechanical solve starts ;-)

"Human speedcubers' solve times only include the physical manipulation of the cube and don't include some time which is allowed to "inspect" the cube beforehand. Times recorded by CubeStormer II are for the total solve including: image capture, software solution calculation and physical solve."

This is just amazing, such powerfull software! Very nice!

@ultimatelighting We worked really hard to get Cubestormer 2 as fast as possible, from selecting the optimum gearing for torgue/speed, through to intelligent software which selects the fastest solve for the machine.

Whoaa... Best compliments to the programmer... I can't imagine doing that ammount of programming myself... Wonder if they used Mindstorms or C++, or both.

This is a good idea but there are some positions where capturing images of 5 faces is not sufficient to work out where all of the edge pieces are. For example, consider a position where the cube is solved apart from four edge pieces on one face which have all been twisted by 180 degrees. The only way to tell if those pieces have also been exchanged is to look at the face to which the are all common. If that happens to be the 6th side that was not scanned then it is not possible to extrapolate.

@casperycghost We have no immediate plans to produce any building instructions,or release the programming code for Cubestormer II, maybe sometime in the future?

You're right that Feliks Zemdegs turns the puzzle amazingly rapidly at almost twice the rate of CubeStormer II. I greatly admire Feliks and all human speedcubers! Robot and human records are set with different rules. For example the robot rules require the scan and calculation time ("inspection" for human competitions) to be included in the total time. You may be interested to see some other CubeStormer II solves On Mike Dobson's channel, RoboticSolutions, here: watch?v=qTq2V1aPAp8

@data1135 it was a genuinely random scramble. You may like to know that since this video was uploaded, Mike and I demonstrated CubeStormer II at ARM TechCon 2011 in Santa Clara where attendees scrambled the cube for it and even faster solve times were achieved live :D

Yes but maybe you didn't notice it, the 1st second the robot took pictures of all faces of the cube with the phone so it can known what combinations to use: So this robot actually resolves the thng in 4 and so seconds + 1 seconds seeing what are the positions in the cube

@IAssemble The first CubeStormer (and most cube solving robots that use optimal solutions) used a solve engine based on Kociemba's Cube Explorer. It's probably unlikely they rewrote a solving engine from scratch.

This will actually be faster than the given time, as it analyzes the cube after the time starts, while regular players are allowed to analyze before the clock starts ticking.

Hahahaha I die at the beginning "ga ga ga!"

Yes, Mats Valk, Feliks Zemdegs and all the other human speedcubers are amazing aren't they! :)

this smashes the world record considering they have 10 seconds to look at the cube before beginning to solve it whereas this does both in under the world record time

Normally I just made castles out of my legos, but I guess that's pretty cool, too.

It is possible to say that when a copy or clone of your mind is made, it breaks away from being 'you' and becomes a different entity very similar to you. This can be inferred from the fact that as two things cannot occupy the same space, the other mind must be experiencing different things from the original, and as such cannot be the same.

THAT'S SO FREAKING AWESOME! I also work with nxt robots, but that is the most avanced lego robot i've ever seen!

@DleekRacing Um.... It's mixed up on all sides, and the center pieces on each side cannot change anyway. Remember, if you turn one row of the cube, you're also turning 2 other rows as well. If he had moved the center section, it would have been no different. And also, the device can turn it so that the center can be manipulated. Watch the video again.

Next time somebody asks me "what's the best cell phone at the time", I tell them it's the SGS2 and point them to this video.

Woah! We used those NXT things before in Lego Robotics!

@fpwncxy you are correct that "God's Number", the number of moves to solve the worst-case positions of the Rubik's Cube, has been proven to be 20. I had the pleasure of meeting Tomas Rokicki, one of the people who proved this, at ARM TechCon! The algorithm used by CubeStormer II searches for solutions which are optimized for manipulation speed rather than the number of moves. Owing to the mechanical design of the robot, the fastest solutions often have more than the minimum number of moves.

The smartphone scans all sides. Then it simulates an rubics cube. Then it solves it while the NXT is listening and converting the solution to the engines moving the arms

The NXT is not processing anything for the screen to show anything though? All the processing is done through the Galaxy S3, and the motor control is worked through the NXT 'Brain'

I wish they release the blue print... This is so awesome.

I'd like some more information about how this works. This looks to me like mess of a horribly convoluted optimization problem. It looks like color recognition, computation time, and the number of moves all have to be carefully balanced. On top of that, the algorithm must be specifically made for this robot. How is an algorithm for the cube found that is compatible with the robot? How is it that the algorithm avoids turning an arm on the mechanism too far? How is when to rotate the cube determined? Can this mechanism rotate the middle layers of the cube (slice moves)?

@PhasmatisApparatus do you know how many combinations of moves would be have to be tried in order to find a solution this way by brute force and how long this would take? But I agree, Mike did an amazing job with the LEGO "hardware" ;-)

LEGO FTW. I've not seen such awesomeness before!

@spintronic2 We are allowed to inspect the cubes for a total of 15 seconds if needed, so yes.

@pey3b There's actually a number of simple algorithms for solving the cube from any position. That's how human solvers do it super fast - they just memorize a set of simple steps that solve it, A bit of googling on your own part will turn up programs that will solve any scrambled cube in less than a second. The hard part is making the machine spin the cube fast enough. The cube DOES have a lot of different possible states, but because of how it's designed, all of them are simple to solve.

True, However the Guinness World Record rules for robots require that the time to scan and calculate the solution is included in the total time. This seems sensible as the challenges lie in optimizing the speed and efficiency of both mechanical and software design ;-)

Sorprendente, el ingenio humano es asombroso!

I wanna see the algorithm you use in the cell phone. It'd be so freaking AWESOME

This device is absolutely incredible.

Wow. And this includes the inspection.

you should put the touch censor on the bottom of the platform (where the cube goes) so you can just put the cube in and it automatically goes to work

Have you tried using a really fast speedcube in that machine? Like a Moyu weilong for example?

@lpeabody The app on the Samsung Galaxy S II communicates with one of the NXTs via bluetooth and the four NXTs communicate with each other via "port 4" using wired RS485 serial communications. It was fun writing the distributed software for CubeStormer II as it consists of about 20 co-operating tasks/processes/threads :-)

when humans solve a rubics cube they get time to sit and examine it before they solve it, taking their time to memorize where everything is and how they are gonna solve it, and THEN do it in 5.66s or whatever.. this machines scans the cube, calculates how to solve it and then does it.. in 5.35s.. Making this very impressive!

Amazing. Good work.

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in Reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an Angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!

@RoboticSolutions man that's genius... nice machine :) i wonder how you could use the software of the phone to work with the NXT, but i'll try to figure it out myself :p

Woah, it sure CRACKED it in no time.

@OktoberSunset there are four NXTs, one for each arm (Mike can give you more details)

I was think about how you could make this faster. Can you take 3 sides in 1 photo by positioning the phone at the corner, the you would just need to turn it over and take the other 3 sides. Or would it be possible to take pictures of just 5 faces and extrapolate the 6th side on the phones processor?.

@Crucifer555 Easy - it recorded all six sides, blanked while computing the algorithm and animation then displayed its moves.

ooh cool, thanks very much. this is all a very impressive assembly! currently the solve time is 5740.75±543ms based on those 12. do you have any other ideas to optimize solve speed? I guess the real limitations are the lego motors and the physical space needed inside the machine to efficiently turn the sides, other then better solving algorhythms, fasters motors and more cameras are there other ways to significantly (1s+) increase the average solve speed?

That's great! Their mind to enjoy their lives is very good!!

@Conspie aahw you are right... i get it.. if you turn the center, it's the same as turning both outers... Thx!

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING MAN!!! You really what the machines to start learning!