CubeStormer II is the fastest Rubik cube solving robot in the world. It set a Guinness World Record of 5.270s for the fastest robot solving of a Rubik’s Cube in November 2011. I saw it in action on Saturday at the Swindon Lego show. Click the image below to watch a video I took.

(there is also a .mov version on screencast.com)

The project was commissioned by ARM Holdings and designed and built by Mike Dobson (who built the Lego robot) and David Gilday (who wrote the software). A custom Android app on a Samsung mobile phone images the cube and instructs the Lego robot what turns to make. The robot is made from 4 Lego Mindstorm NXT kits.

I got to speak briefly with David Gilday and he told me that the software is optimized for the robot’s capabilities, so it computes the quickest sequence for the robot, rather than the minimum number of moves. The software uses pre-computed look up tables of moves for speed. Apparently the limiting factor on the speed is the power of the motors. CubeStormer II can manage about 5 moves per second, whereas the best humans can manage 9 moves per second.

It didn’t work every time. But it is an impressive achievement. Especially considering the software was written by a hardware engineer! ;0)

(there is also a .mov version on screencast.com)

More details over at Wired.