RuBot Is Rubik's King
By Ben Lake
First came deep blue, the chess playing computer that defeated a world champion. Now here comes RuBot II, ready to make the Rubik’s cube another activity us humans can't do quite as well as machines.That’s right, forget twirling hours away on the 1970s favourite puzzler; the new robot will have solved it, made a cup of tea and sat back with a smug look on its face before you can say, “I remember those, they’re a lot better than all these electronic toys we have nowadays.”
RuBot, designed by Pete Redmond from Dublin, Ireland, was recently showing off his Rubik’s mastery at the Young Scientist Exhibition in his home city. Previous to this he had taken some time out to beat UK Rubik’s cube champion Sean Connolly at the UK Open Rubik’s Cube Championships 2006.
The tricky techie works by first scanning the cube on all six sides with his webcam eyes and then uses its pneumatic arms to solve the puzzle. The normal amount of time that is taken to solve a puzzle is 35 seconds and around 20 moves - quite speedy for what amounts to some webcams linked to a couple of pneumatic pumps. Don’t start using those cubes as book ends just yet though; the RuBot doesn't get it right every time. Unless the light is just right the webcams struggle to register colours properly and the arms can come out of alignment leading to the robot pulling the cube apart. A few speed cubists, as they are known in the business, did manage to beat RuBot at the 2006 championships, so maybe there’s no need to worry about that machine takeover quite yet.
Watch this video of RuBot in action. He’s ever so polite.
Find out more about RuBot and Pete Redmond's other creations at Mechatrons. Or stick here for more robots on the Null:
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Image: Mechatrons
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