A robot built by a robotics student and a software developer has (unofficially) broken the world record by solving a Rubik's Cube in an astounding 0.38 seconds. Yes, you read that right, that's less than half a second!
Ben Katz, a student at MIT's Biomimetic Robotics Lab uploaded a video of the robot completing the puzzle in 0.38 seconds on YouTube, where it has been viewed over 2,997,000 times already.
In case you were wondering, according to Guinness World Records, the fastest a human can solve a Rubik's Cube is 4.69 seconds and the fastest a robot can solve it (so far) is 0.637 seconds.
This robot, invented by Mr Katz and Jared Di Carlo, can "definitely go faster," claim the duo. Except, they've currently "lost interest" in the "time consuming" project for now, explains Mr Katz in a blog post.
"We noticed that all of the fast Rubik's Cube solvers were using stepper motors and thought that we could do better if we used better motors," explains Mr Di Carlo in a separate blog post.
The robot was built with six motors (two from a robot arm), six motor drivers, and two PlayStation Eye cameras.
The video posted on YouTube slows down the speed to 25 percent and then 3 percent to show exactly how the robot solves the Rubik's Cube.
