A robot has set a brand new record for solving a Rubik's Cube: 637 milliseconds! The previous record from the beginning of 2016 was 900 milliseconds. The fastest human in the Rubik's Cube is just a little outlander with 4.9 seconds!
Since its invention in 1974, the Rubik's Cube has been the subject of incessant attempts to record with a single and eternal goal: to go faster and faster to reconstruct the six colored faces. As of this little game, humans are outdoing themselves. The official world record emerge 2015 is 4.90 seconds. In early November, a Dutchman by the name of Mats Valk lowered this already incredible time with a period of 4.74 seconds (to discover in this YouTube video). Really impressive when you know there are 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 different arrangements of small cubes and only one corresponds to the desired position.
And yet, this is nothing compared as to the a robot can do. Indeed, several days ago, a device named Sub1 Reloaded took less than the usual second in order to complete a Rubik's Cube, 637 milliseconds to be precise. The previous Rubik's Cube record set by a robot was January 2016 and was 900 milliseconds.
The Sub1 Reloaded uses an Infineon microcontroller
The Sub1 Reloaded has been designed by the semiconductor manufacturer Infineon as a display for the performance of its Aurix microcontroller for autonomous driving systems for automobiles. In agreement with the World Cube Association, the organization that runs the Rubik's Cube competitions, the robot's designers used a unique cube whose parts produce less friction than those of the mainstream model. To validate this new world record, Infineon still must be approved by the Guinness World Records organization, which publishes the famous eponymous book.