It's a time that even the fastest speedcubing fans can't match. Purdubik's Cube, a robot designed by four engineering students at Purdue University in Indiana, officially solved a Rubik's Cube in just 0.103 seconds. This far surpasses the previous record of 0.305 seconds, held since May 2024 by Mitsubishi Electric in Japan.
No time to look, and the Rubik's Cube is already solved
This performance was validated by Guinness World Records, which praised the feat of the "fastest robot to solve a cube." In comparison, blinking an eye takes between 200 and 300 milliseconds. "Before you even realize it's moving, we're already done," summarized one of the team members, Matthew Patrohay.
Behind this somewhat facetious name—a contraction of Purdue and Rubik's—hides a machine packed with technology: color recognition by computer vision, solving algorithms optimized for speed, and industrial components supplied by Kollmorgen for precise mechanical control. Each movement of the robot is adjusted to gain precious fractions of a millisecond at each step.
Originally, Purdubik's Cube was just a project submitted to the December 2024 SPARK competition, organized by Purdue's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. After winning first place, the four students—Junpei Ota, Aden Hurd, Matthew Patrohay, and Alex Berta—continued its development, with support from the university's Institute for Control, Optimization, and Networks. Funds raised through company internships also contributed to financing the project.
Far from being a simple gadget, the robot reflects advances in ultra-fast automated systems, already used in industry for packaging and precision assembly. "This achievement goes well beyond the Rubik's Cube, it opens up perspectives on very high-speed coordinated control systems," emphasizes Nak-seung Patrick Hyun, a professor at Purdue.
The icing on the cake: the creators integrated a Bluetooth module allowing a user to shuffle the puzzle in real time via a smart cube. The robot then follows the mirrored movements, before solving the configuration as soon as the shuffling is complete. A demonstration as impressive as it is fun.
The Rubik's Cube, created in 1974, continues to fascinate amateurs and engineers alike. Even in the age of machines, it remains a fascinating playground for testing speed, logic, and imagination.
0 Comments