Robot to Solve Rubik’s Cube ^®

A compact, self-contained robot has been built for solving the three-dimensional Rubik’s Cube ® puzzle. This robot (designated the Cubot) system reads the color patterns from the scrambled cube faces, computes a puzzle solution and then manipulates the cube to return each cube face to a uniform color in less than three minutes. The vision system of the Cubot determines the face color patterns by reading the optical response with two color channels and then grouping the response vectors for the total cube using a nearest neighbor algorithm. A menu-type solution algorithm is then used to determine the sequence of moves that solves the puzzle. Two orthogonal manipulators, which grip the cube edges, then execute each move of this stored solution and return each face of the cube to a single color. The Cubot demonstrates the potential of state-of-the-art technology when color vision, adaptive intelligence and a manipulator with several degrees of freedom are integrated together.