12 ms·
Mitsubishi robot solves Rubik's Cube in 0.305s
- aureliusm 2y agoThis was the funniest first 3 seconds of a video that I've seen the whole day. Food for geek mind!
- teh_infallible 2y agoThis is incredibly impressive, but I wonder- how does a project like this get proposed and funded? Why would Mitsubishi devote resources to solving a Rubik’s Cube as quickly as possible?
- mitthrowaway2 2y agoProjects like these attract attention at trade shows. Probably for their servomotors and controls division, because their customers will be interested in doing similar high-speed manipulation for more practical applications, and showing off that you can do this using these products gives a good feel for other things that you might also be able to do with them.
- krm01 2y agoSo it’s basically a marketing project? Are you aware of some articles I can read about these types of projects and their economics as well as ROI?
- SmallDeadGuy 2y agoExactly this. My dad still demonstrates his CubeStormer and other Lego robots on behalf of Arm at trade shows, because both the Lego robot control unit and the phones used for camera/solver are Arm-powered. And CubeStormer 3 set the previous record over 10 years ago at this point. CubeStormer was a hobby project though, so not the same as this robot which looks like it entirely uses company resources.
- elevaet 2y agoIt might be a promotional flex. Here we are talking about Mitsubishi.
- vlovich123 2y agoIt’s a visceral demo that execs and customers can interact with to demonstrate Mitsubishi’s expertise in robotics. It’s both for PR purposes (improving the value of the brand) + sales (come talk to us for your robot needs) + defending the R&D departments budget (hey exec, isn’t this thing we built really cool? We’re actually accomplishing progress on long term goals, not just collecting a paycheck and doing nothing).
- ThrowawayTestr 2y agoIt's a demonstration of extremely fast and precise motors.
- TylerE 2y agoSo they can sell giant expensive industrial robotics.
- pengaru 2y agofor all we know this is one of their test cases
- reverius42 2y agoNice that some places still hire testers.
- jaydeegee 2y ago2 things it's a marketing exercise but it's also R&D an actual test use case for high speed precision motors/controllers. I can imagine this video is almost nsfw for folk building industrial machines.
- brazzy 2y agoI know what you mean, but... Not safe for work - because it's their job?
- anigbrowl 2y ago- How can we market our world-class precision manufacturing skills more effectively - What if we make a robot that solves Rubik's cube at insane speeds - Sounds cool, see you in 3 months
- razodactyl 2y ago> This is a 2015 story. Why is it dated 2024? Edit: Ignore me, I was confused with the .38/s video from 6 years ago. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nt00QzKuNVY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nt00QzKuNVY
- dang 2y agoAccording to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59qgzzSD1tk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59qgzzSD1tk (linked from the OP) it got a Guinness world record a few weeks ago.
- razodactyl 2y agoThanks Dang! I found the original one my brain was going stupid over. I couldn't use Google to find it... Google's advance search only goes up to a year ago. Kinda scary how we can lose knowledge like this...
- divbzero 2y ago> Kinda scary how we can lose knowledge like this... Also kind of amazing how we’ve come to expect maintaining knowledge like this…
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Karupan 2y agoI don’t know much about Rubik’s cubes, but isn’t that quite a limited number of moves as seen in the video? As a demo for the electronics and control systems, it’s great. But is it really that impressive from solving a cube that it got done in a blink of an eye? Genuinely curious, as I’ve always been skeptical of claims of world record cube solving times, if there is a heavy reliance on the starting position, and that isn’t consistent.
- Arainach 2y agoAny Rubik's cube can be solved in at most 20 turns, and we have established algorithms to solve any position in at most 30 that the computer is surely using. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_solutions_for_the_Rubik%27s_Cube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_solutions_for_the_Rubi... https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/cody/problems/1123-rubik-s-cube-30-moves-or-less-minimum-moves https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/cody/problems/1123-r...
- nsilvestri 2y agoComputers can generate optimal solutions to arbitrary positions. There's no need to apply the human-optimized ergonomic algorithms or methods that human use to speedsolve.
- kuboble 2y agoThe most popularly used algorithm is 2-phase algorithm solver. In a first phase you Reduce the cube state to a one that can be solved in only 180-degree turns, and in the second phase you complete the job using only 180-degree turns. It has a nice property of splitting the work roughly in half (so both of those phases have roughly half bits of complexity of the full puzzle). And both of them are small enough that can be solved pretty instantly. The optimal Reduction is not often leading to optimal solution, so you try out many different Reductions and see which one can be completed fastest. Interestingly - this is also the approach top human solvers use in Fewest Moves event. https://github.com/cs0x7f/min2phase https://github.com/cs0x7f/min2phase (in java) and https://github.com/cs0x7f/min2phase.js https://github.com/cs0x7f/min2phase.js (in js) This very nice library is a minimalistic implementation of 2phase algorithm and can generate hundreds of scrambles per second in the browser (so generating random state and then solving and then printing) and it hardly ever produces scramble longer than 20 moves. It's used by cubing trainers / timers etc. So a good algorithm in a fast language on a good cpu should solve a cube in roughly 20 moves in probabaly 0.001s. However to squeeze few miliseconds here and there it would make sense to read the cube state, use some very fast heuristic to make a first move, and utilize the 0.1s it takes to rotate the first face to find the best possible solution afterwards. Probably by the move 3 we will reach optimal solution.
- 01100011 2y agoThis might replace sumo robot fights as the thing I use to show people how fast machines are. Like, seriously, I don't think most people can comprehend the speed of robots, much less the speed of the processing controlling them. I think it's one of those things you should just intuitively understand if you're living in the modern world. If the robots ever do rise up, and I'm not saying they will, you won't see it coming!
- danparsonson 2y agoFortunately if they do rise up, we can defeat them with an endless stream of Rubik's cubes to solve
- thwarted 2y agoThe topological anomaly did not work to slow down the Borg.
- uoaei 2y agoInteresting, my mind spirals. Is the ego (Borg queen) manifesting (appearing only after TNG) to quell the neurotic, all-consuming pursuit of answers to technically impossible but theoretically valid questions? Did bare, mechanic cognition come first, then some way to reflect on and steer it as a defense mechanism to getting stuck in catatonic or compulsive loops? wat
- robertlagrant 2y agoBorg Queen, not Borg Head of Engineering.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- defrost 2y agoEndless? Just toss them a couple with the stickers swapped about.
- postalrat 2y agoWhere can I buy that Rubik's cube?
- jdietrich 2y agoIt's actually a Rubik's brand cube. If you have fingers rather than servo motors, you'll probably have a better time with a Moyu RS3M v5 or an X-Man Tornado v3. https://www.rubiks.com/products/rubiks-3x3 https://www.rubiks.com/products/rubiks-3x3
- RetroTechie 2y agoYeah. Back in the late '80s knock-offs were trash without exception. These days, the better (speed)cubes are non-Rubik ones.
- gnicholas 2y agoTo what extent is this success based on improvements in processing/strategy versus mechanical optimizations? And to what extent is the timing based on starting position? Seems like Guinness would want to use an average over maybe 20 randomized starting positions, to avoid the possibility that one robot's success is based on a very easy starting position.
- Eji1700 2y agoI believe mathematically you’re only 20 moves from solving in any sufficiently scrambled position . Don’t know if they’re controlling for that or not but I suppose if that would matter depends on how far ahead of the previous record this is Looking at the article it looks like it’s .08 seconds ahead, which taken as a % of total time strikes me as substantial enough as to not much matter. I’m counting 16 moves in the slower video (which was not the WR) but I’m also barely aware of this stuff so I could be wrong.
- larschdk 2y agoLargely mechanical and calibration. As soon as you have the acceleration/torque and timing accuracy you need, the rest is in the calibration. For example, you need to overturn and then backstep for maximum deacceleration and precise landing. This is highly dependent on the type of plastic, wear and tear, and even temperature, which you would need to take into account if this needs to be reliably in an industrial environment. And then there is plastic molding imperfections that could mess with the calibration. I bet centripetal forces are also quite significant in this case, nearly tearing the cube apart. Good speedcubes are very easy to disassemble accidentally.
- kuboble 2y agoThey did use relatively lucky scramble. Not pathologically easy but approximately top 3% most lucky scrambles (https://cube20.org/ https://cube20.org/) This is the visualisation of the scramble and the solution they used: https://alg.cubing.net/?setup=x2_U_F2_R_L__F2_D_R2_U2_R-__F2_U-_D-_B2_R-_D2_R2_&alg=R2_D2_R_B2_(U_D)_F2_R_U2_R2_D-__F2_(R-_L-)_F2_U- https://alg.cubing.net/?setup=x2_U_F2_R_L__F2_D_R2_U2_R-__F2... Few comments on the solution: They took advantage of the ability to move two parallel faces at once making solution in 14 steps (if you consider Up and Down move at the same time to be only one step). If they have a double-turn move they ALWAYS turned clockwise.
- Bengalilol 2y agoHow much energy did it suck?
- kolinko 2y agoProbably a miniscule amount compared to humans doing the same thing.
- mkhalil 2y agoSorta related: (if this video triggers some brain neurons from the past) In 2018, this was solved by some guys (I believe one worked for Boston Dynamics) in 0.38s. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt00QzKuNVY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt00QzKuNVY Hardware Info: https://build-its-inprogress.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-rubiks-contraption.html https://build-its-inprogress.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-rubiks... Software Info: https://cactus-zone.blogspot.com/2018/03/rubiks-solver-software.html https://cactus-zone.blogspot.com/2018/03/rubiks-solver-softw...
- jedberg 2y agoIt's very related: it's mentioned in the article. :)
- keefle 2y agoVery interesting video! In the slowed version it seemed like the operations were fully sequential, I think they might be able to achieve a shorter time by overlapping some operations and potentially with edge-cutting too In the slow-montion footage of the shared faster Mitsubishi robot you can see it's doing some operations in parallel (but not edge-cutting)
- leni536 2y agoI think edge-cutting would possibly just disassemble the cube at this speed.
- kuboble 2y agoThe speed solving enthusiast point of view. The reconstruction of the solution can be watched here: https://alg.cubing.net/?setup=x2_U_F2_R_L__F2_D_R2_U2_R-__F2_U-_D-_B2_R-_D2_R2_&alg=R2_D2_R_B2_(U_D)_F2_R_U2_R2_D-__F2_(R-_L-)_F2_U- https://alg.cubing.net/?setup=x2_U_F2_R_L__F2_D_R2_U2_R-__F2... It is a 16 moves solution, which is rather lucky (1 in 35 or so) [1] The human record of solving a cube in Fewest Moves is also 16 [2] [1] https://cube20.org https://cube20.org [2] https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/results/rankings/333fm/single https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/results/rankings/333fm/...
- v9v 2y agoVery impressive. Comparing the slow-mo to one of a different rubik solver [0], there's much less overshoot in this one. [0] https://build-its-inprogress.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-rubiks-contraption.html https://build-its-inprogress.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-rubiks... (see first video)
- ugh123 2y agoThe next evolution of this should be two 5-fingered robot hands doing the work.
- thangngoc89 2y agoI have been solving Rubik’s cube for 10 years. Some of the moves are impossible for human like rotating the up and down faces (or left and right faces) at the same time. For human, it would be rotating the middle and rotate the whole cube instead.
- dclowd9901 2y agoWhich is why I can’t understand why people still put so much effort into it. It’s one of those things humans will never do better than a machine. It’s not like woodworking where the errors are part of the “soul” of the piece, or like creating art, where creativity is the core of the endeavor. It’s just trying to spin stupid planes on a stupid block as quickly as possible. Before you’ve even started, you’ve failed. I also put running into this category. What are you going to do? Run a 0:00.00 mile? What’s the point of training to run faster? At some point we’ll decide someone is the fastest “natural” human and then we’ll move onto cybernetic humans because what are we going to do? Continue to watch people not be amazing? I’m not sure what my overall point here is except to say I feel like when it comes to mechanical capability, shooting for the “best” is just stupid and pointless. When it comes to artistic capability, sky is the limit.
- diatone 2y agoPeople do it because they like to, for reasons entirely up to them. Maybe they find it interesting. Maybe it’s therapeutic. Maybe it gives them a social opportunity. Maybe it’s fun to push your own limits, for its own sake. None of that is stupid or pointless. If someone started looking at me do my hobby with my friends and decide I was a failure, that’s their perspective. But I think the response the kids give to that these days is “touch grass.”
- bowsamic 2y agoI feel like I'm responding to the most clueless and ridiculous HN comment ever, but I assume it's because it's fun to improve your skills and also to compete with other humans. Do you not have a concept of this? I'm sorry for the snark, but your comment is extremely sad to me. It's shocking how much digital ink is spilled on HN explaining really simple human feelings to people who pretend that they don't understand them. Comments like yours are among the worst things about this place.
- robertlagrant 2y agoYou know what it is? Because it's a robot, it can spin both sides at once. That's why it does it in 0.3s, and I'm still doing mine a year later.
- Keirmot 2y agoI bought one when I lied to myself and said I'll learn to do this in less than a minute. After 3 weeks I just got an app and solved it. Now I use it as a motivation tool to force me to close all my rings on the Apple Watch - whenever I don't, I move one side per ring not closed, and when I close I can fix it my how many rings I did close.
- Night_Thastus 2y agoIt edged out my old mark by two seconds ... and 16 minutes ... and 12 hours. I do plan to finish someday!
- freilanzer 2y agoAs a complete layman when it comes to these cubes: is the initial configuration a full instruction to get to the solved cube or is it necessary to evaluate the state after each rotation?
- ryankrage77 2y agoThe initial state is enough. There are numerous algorithms to solve a cube from any state.
- mock-possum 2y agoNope, people can definitely glance at the initial state, then solve it blindfolded, with the quickness. There are a ton of possible combinations of colours, but they always boil down to far less ‘moves’ to solve than you might guess.
- tomalbrc 2y agoI am confused, how is this impressive? Isn't the premise of computers (software and hardware) to be faster than humans? We have have known and used them for decades because they are faster? It's a neat party trick but... What am I missing?
- bamboozled 2y agoYou're clearly not in the market of finding investors ?
- SomeoneFromCA 2y agoHumans still have higher precision micromotorics (assembling watches for example)
- spencerchubb 2y agoThe fastest human solver (Max Park) actually has autism and problems with fine motor skills. Just goes to show that cubing is more about macro motor skills
- SomeoneFromCA 2y agoThis does not contradict what I've said.
- spencerchubb 2y agoI did not intend to contradict but add on. I suppose my usage of 'actually' could be seen as contradicting
- amelius 2y agoI wonder about the G-forces involved ...
- danbruc 2y agoFor 90° in 9 ms and a 57 mm cube, I get accelerations of 4.4 million degree per second squared and 225 g at a corner assuming equal and constant acceleration and deceleration during the turn.
- nottorp 2y agoI can only wonder not about the robot's speed but... What's that cube made of to widthstand being solved in 0.3 seconds?
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y agoWell, that was fast! :) I'd be more interested to see where Mitsubushi are using this same high-speed robotics tech in production use.
- schaefer 2y agoIn human competitions, all hands must start and end on the timer for the score to be valid. Also, the human is limited to one point of view, which can not analyze the entire cube in one glance. I am not saying this robot isn't impressive. What I'm saying is: lets see the time if the clock is running while the robot operator loads and unloads the cube from the robot. I doubt it competes with the current human world record: Max Park 3.134 seconds [1] [1]: https://youtu.be/x1x4NATOutM?si=EoIQ1PvEw2Jn_zdd https://youtu.be/x1x4NATOutM?si=EoIQ1PvEw2Jn_zdd
- zamadatix 2y agoThe second point is a bit moot as humans are allowed to analyze the full cube before the timer starts. E.g. in the Max Park video he already knows all of the moves he's going to perform before he starts the timer. As for loading I think it'd be fun to see how fast the robot could perform the same start conditions. Mostly because of how many cubes would fly apart in testing :p.
- spencerchubb 2y agoEven if a human solver could start/stop with cube in hand, that would only save about 0.3 seconds
- schaefer 2y agoFrom the perspective of the Human, that's true. But what about from the perspective of the Robot. All of a sudden we'd have to start adding multiple axis of control to the robot to be able to pick up the cube from the table. From that point of view the impact is far from trivial.
- kuroguro 2y agoWe'll soon need reinforced, precision machined, well oiled cubes for robot tournaments ^^;
- pvillano 2y agoSpeed cube robots are great for several reasons: * They move really fast * They necessarily look like science fiction reactors * if they jam the cube explodes
- geodel 2y agoAnd I wasn't able to solve in 30 months. I think it is becoming mandatory to buy this robot along with Rubik's cube to get this damned thing solved.
- dolmen 2y agoBuy a LEGO set and build your robot at home: http://www.mindcuber.com/ http://www.mindcuber.com/
- spencerchubb 2y agoI'm a competitive speedcuber and my best time is a little over 5 seconds It looks like this robot can do about 67 turns per second (tps) The fastest humans can do 20 to 30 tps, but only for especially ergonomic algorithms. This robot was able to achieve its tps with arbitrary moves that would be terrible ergonomically for a human. Quite impressive
- BenjiWiebe 2y ago"speed" cuber here too (19s PB) - What amazes me is that you guys can do 20 to 30 tps ever.
- Xeyz0r 2y agoThat's incredibly impressive!
- dolmen 2y agoModifying the cube to grip the faces is cheating. (builder of a LEGO Mindstorms cube solver speaking)
- Xeyz0r 2y agoThe video itself is quite satisfying to watch