Lego Robot Solves Bigger and Harder Rubik's Cubes

kkleiner writes "It was only two months ago that we saw Mike Dobson's Cube Stormer Lego robot that could solve any 3x3 Rubik's cube in less than 12 seconds. You would think that there was only one person in the world crazy enough and talented enough to pull this off, but now we have found someone else that is just as amazing. The latest Rubik's cube-solving Lego monstrosity is called the MultiCuber, and although it's constructed out of nothing but Mindstorms components and a laptop, it can solve 2×2, 3×3, 4×4, and 5×5 cubes all in the same build! As if that weren't enough, a larger version solves the dreaded 6×6 Rubik's. We discovered the MultiCuber when its creator, David Gilday (IAssemble), wrote us an email to brag about its puzzle-solving might. Consider us impressed, sir."

Re:Conditions of cube?

[SuperMonkeyCube]

The reason that most speedcubers use the Fridrich method is that it is affected less by cube conditions than the corners first method used by Minh Thai in the 80's. A corners first method involves a lot of slice moves (turning the middle layer between the two outer layers), effectively doubling the frictional force required to turn it. The Fridrich method has a large move table and emphasis on face turns instead of slices. The Kociemba algorithm, like what you would find in the 'Cube Explorer' program, uses a much larger move table even than the Fridrich algorithm, and is optimized for a low number of face turns - although not always minimal, it's usually pretty close. So even if the thing wasn't lubed that well, it's going to be fast just because of the low number of moves that it will be able to compute. I would also hope that the robot would be able to apply more torque more precisely than a human and isn't doing more than one cube turn with a given motion, so it has a good chance of overcoming the friction of a new cube. Human cubers do things like RU' (right face clockwise, top face counterclockwise) with a single hand motion and an unlubed cube would hang up on the transition between the two motions. The robot would do two separate clean twists without having to worry about a transition.

All of the V-Cubes, which would be any 6x6x6 or 7x7x7 available that I know of, are more speedcubing friendly right out of the box, as its design was done with correcting for small misalignments in mind so as not to put too much torque on the pieces when turning the cube.

Re:Conditions of cube?

[MyLongNickName]

I don't get it.

This is slashdot. You will fit in quite well here.