ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

"Copper Dragon" made a wonderful small NXT based cube solver with an ingenious new mechanism to solve the cube. below are some quotes how it is made: The machine can turn the bottom face by blocking the middle layer with the fork and rotating the turn-table. It can not turn the top face at all and the cube itself can only be rotated around the vertical axis. This requires of course a special solving strategy and a special way to scan the colors: It needs to restructure the whole cube while scanning. This scanning process is rather cumbersome and takes up the first 18 seconds. The solving algorithm consists of 7 phases with precomputed tables that solves a 2x2x2 subcube first, extends to 3x2x2 then F2L and last layer in one step. It tries 4 rotational symetries and chooses the shortest solution. By this an average of approximately 38 turns are needed for a full solve. What you see in the video is indeed a full solve that requires about 18 seconds for scanning, 1 sec...

Rubik's Cube solving Robots' expert David Gilday, famous for World-record breaking CubeStormer II , is also the creator of the MindCuber that can be built with one single NXT 2.0 set. Here he races against his own creation:

Remember Cubestormer II?  That amazing Rubik's Cube solving robot?  Well David Gilday (one half of the Cubestormer team) has posted a nice reflection of the time spent on the project.  I hadn't realised that he and Mike Dobson (the other half) were actually in a friendly competition to see who could create the fastest only to decide that they would be better off working together. The 2013 Guiness Book of Records has just been released and David happily shows off the Cubestormer entry for 'Fastest Robot to Solve a Rubik's Cube'.  The official time is 5.270 seconds! Just a note, the fastest human clocks in at 5.66 seconds. via -  http://blogs.arm.com/smart-connected-devices/794-cubestormer-ii-the-power-of-two/   Read the whole article here -   http://blogs.arm.com/smart-connected-devices/794-cubestormer-ii-the-power-of-two/ Here's a 4.672 second solve they managed to catch on camera Congrats Mike and David!

David Gilday, one of the creators of the World record breaking Rubik's cube solver CubeStormer II , has published a video on a new solver of his: the MicroCuber . It's arguably the world's first robot that is able to solve the MicroBic , a tiny Rubik's cube style puzzle: Intriguing!

David Gilday, creator of the MindCuber , sent me his latest video which demonstrates his robot solving a Void Cube. "MindCuber can be seen here solving the Void Cube. It is essentially a Rubik's Cube with holes through the center of each face, which makes it slightly more complex to solve. The description on the video itself says a little more."

David Gilday, one of the two creators of the world speed record breaking CubeStormer II , has published a video on his "MindCuber", a new Rubik's Cube solving NXT robot. One of the remarkable things about it: it can be built with a single NXT 2.0 set! I've seen it in action at the WRO in Abu Dhabi and there are rumours that David is going to publish building instructions for it soon.

Remember Cube Stormer one and a half year ago, the MINDSTORMS-driven machine that could solve a Rubik's Cube very fast? Now, its creators have come out with an enhanced version, called Cube Stormer II . It can solve an arbitrary cube faster than any human:

Right You've seen them all, those Rubik's Cube solvers, now this is is different. The Megaminx is a dodecahedron with 12 faces, each with 5 edges. Each face can be rotated in a similar way to the well-known Rubik's Cube puzzle. The robot itself is built out of LEGO using a Mindstorms NXT kit for driving the mechanics. An HTC Desire smartphone running a custom Android app is the brain of the solver. The app uses the phone's camera to capture images of each face of the Megaminx which it then processes to determine the colors of the scrambled puzzle. After working out the solution, the app transmits the moves to the NXT controller via bluetooth to instruct it to solve the Magaminx. Check this blog for more information, and enjoy the nice movie update, second full movie I say that is a job well done, David Gilday!

Remember this? TiltedTwister . Hans is back, and now with an even nicer Cube Solver, completely made with the NXT2.0 retail kit. He supplied complete Building instructions Happy building, and solving your little brothers cube.

Creative robot builder Daniele Benedettelli has published a new NXT book: LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Thinking Robots . "The book will show you how to build and program two robots that think. You'll be awestruck when the TTT Tickler ties you at tic-tac-toe and amazed when the One-Armed Wonder solves a Rubik's Cube in just a few minutes. In addition to providing detailed instructions for building each model with either the original or the NXT 2.0 set, author Daniele Benedettelli takes you inside the robots to show you how they're designed, what makes them think, and how to use them." You can view an excerpt of the book here .

Last week, the renowned Scientific American magazine publised an interesting on-line article about a 12-year-old who built a NXT-based Rubik's Cube Solver, inspired by their father, an IBM research engineer. Also Daniele Benedettelli's amazing Lego Rubik Utopia robot is mentioned.

A month ago Brian Davis posted about Hans Andersson’s Rubik's Cube solver. Yesterday when I visited his website I realized that Hans had published building instructions. All though you need some replacement stickers for your Rubik’s Cube the machine can be built form a single Lego Mindstorms NXT Retail-kit. To download the building instructions and the NXC program go here .

I've been very impressed with Danny's Rubik's Cube solver, both the mechanics and the programming (both of which I might add are beyond my usual range of experience). I recently came across another version by Hans Andersson of an NXT-based Rubik's solver , but one that is completely standalone - no PC or even image processing is required, and the parts list looks to be well under one NXT kit. It uses the US sensor to detect when a cube is placed in the cradle, and then scans it using nothing more exotic than the stock light sensor (he has used a specially colored cube to make the colors easily distinguished). Take a look at the YouTube video - in particular, watch the multi-jointed motion of the arm, (it seems to be a very nicely designed mechanism), as well as the simple way the scanning is accomplished. Not to mention the fun sounds it uses while calculating a solution. I'd love some more details on this project but I don't have any...yet. I am guessing he...