CubeStormer II Solves The Rubik's Cube in 5.352 Seconds

Do you remember the ARM Android Based Rubiks Cube Solver ? Last year it could solve the puzzle in an average of 15 seconds.

David Gilday has upgraded its robot with the help of Mike Dobson and named the device CubeStormer II.

They released a video showing the CubeStormer II solve the Rubik’s Cube in 5.352 seconds, faster than the human world record (5.66 seconds).

The mechanics are constructed entirely from LEGO, including four MINDSTORMS NXT kits, with the addition of a Samsung Galaxy S II smartphone running a custom Android app as the robot’s brain.

The app uses the phone’s camera to capture images of each face of the Rubik’s Cube which it processes to determine the scrambled colours. The solution is found using an advanced two-phase algorithm, originally developed for Speedcuber (originally developed by Mike Dobson), enhanced to be multi-threaded to make effective use of the smartphone’s dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 1.2GHz Samsung Exynos 4210 processor. The software finds an efficient solution to the puzzle which is optimised specifically for the capabilities of the four-grip mechanism. The app communicates via Bluetooth with software running on the ARM microprocessors in the LEGO NXT Intelligent Bricks which controls the motors driving the robot. During the physical solve, the app uses OpenGL ES on the phone’s ARM Mali-400 MP GPU to display a graphical version of the cube being solved in real time.

Human speedcubers’ solve times only include the physical manipulation of the cube and don’t include some time which is allowed to “inspect” the cube beforehand. Times recorded by CubeStormer II are for the total solve including: image capture, software solution calculation and physical solve.

If you want to see it in action, attend ARM TechCon 2011 in Santa Clara, California on October 26-27th.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.