A team of six students from the Swinburne University of Technology have designed a robot, called Ruby, which can solve the Rubik's Cube puzzle within time duration of just over 10 seconds.
Rubik's Cube-solving robot
The total time taken by the Ruby robot includes the time it takes to do the initial scanning of the cube. The robot will be exhibited on 21 August at Swinburne's Open Day.
The Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies, Professor Chris Pilgrim, stated that the Ruby robot uses a web camera to first scan each side of a jumbled cube. The high-speed robot arrives at a solution by utilizing a software algorithm. The solution is then fed to the Ruby robot via an embedded control system that functions in real-time.
In October 2010, the Cubinator was capable of solving a jumbled Rubik's Cube in just 18.2 seconds. Professor Chris also added that the students developed a robot with rapid vision-tracking capability to deliver high-accuracy actions as a result of their combined expertise in software engineering and robotics.
Source: http://www.swinburne.edu.au/