A Rubik’s Cube is a famously difficult puzzle to solve. You must twist and turn the cube until each side shows a single color. Now a new robot can solve the puzzle in the blink of an eye—as quickly as 0.305 seconds!
The puzzle-solving TOKUFASTbot was created by engineers at the Japan-based electronics company Mitsubishi Electric. The bot was programmed with artificial intelligence, or AI, to recognize the mixed-up colors of a Rubik’s Cube. It then uses another algorithm, or set of instructions, to determine the fastest way to unscramble the puzzle. The robot’s builders repurposed high-speed motors already created by Mitsubishi to quickly rotate the cube into position.
TOKUFASTbot was awarded a Guinness World Record for being the fastest robot to solve a Rubik’s Cube. After a lot of hard work, “we were able to create the best robot in the world,” says Takumi Nakaue, who worked on the project.