If You've Ever Felt the Thrill of Solving a Rubik's Cube, You'll Never Get the Job Done as Fast as This Robot

Whatever you do, don't blink.

A pair of software engineers — Jay Flatland and Paul Rose — have fashioned a robot that can solve a Rubik’s Cube in just over 1 second, Venture Beat reported.

Image source: YouTube

Now the duo is applying for a world record. The best time for a machine solve is a comparatively lumbering 3.253 seconds, the outlet said. (The human record isn't too far behind the machine's mark thanks to Lucas Etter's feat last fall, raising the bar to 4.904 seconds.)

Here's the robot at work:

The clip showed the machine solving the Cube in 1.196 seconds, 1.152 seconds, 1.047 seconds and in 1.019 seconds.

More from Venture Beat:

The robot is made up of stepper motors, 3D-printed frames, and four USB webcams hooked up to a PC. The cube is scanned to determine its configuration, the information is fed into the Kociemba Rubik’s Cube solving algorithm, and the robot makes the appropriate moves. The Rubik’s Cube being solved has one important modification: four holes drilled into the middle of each of the six sides so that the machine can manipulate it.

The robot can only function when all four cameras have visibility. As such, in preparation for a solving attempt, the camera is covered with a piece of paper, the cube is manually scrambled, and then the robot is given its new task.