On 23 January, the robot Sub1 solved a Rubiks Cube in 0.887 seconds at the Cubikon store in Munich, Germany. Prior to the world record attempt a WCA-conform modified speed cube was scrambled with a computer generated random array and positioned in the robot.
Once the start button was hit two webcam shutters were moved away. Thereafter a laptop took two pictures, each picture showing three sides of the cube. Then the laptop identified all colours of the cube and calculated a solution with Tomas Rokickis extremely fast implementation of Herbert Kociembas Two-Phase Algorithm.
The solution was handed over to an Arduino-compatible microcontroller board that orchestrated the 20 moves of six high performance steppers. Only 887 milliseconds after the start button had been hit, Sub1 broke a historic barrier and finished the last move in new world record time.
Needing several hundreds of working hours to construct, build, program and tune Sub1, it is the first robot that can independently inspect and solve a Rubiks Cube in under a second. The world record claim has to be investigated and approved by Guinness World Records.
