
Infineon chip solves Rubik’s Cube in 637 milliseconds - upen
http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/7723.html
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patejam
"It takes tremendous computing power to solve such a highly complex puzzle
with a machine."

It doesn't. I can be done quickly on any conventional computer:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_solutions_for_Rubik%27...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_solutions_for_Rubik%27s_Cube)

The time is still impressive, but this doesn't showcase any real improvements
to any technology.

~~~
SilasX
The article seem to be referring to the problem of manipulating a _physical_
Rubik's cube. In that case, the bottleneck is the mechanical interaction, not
the computation of the necessary steps, right? The real achievement here is
the speed of robotic manipulation?

It's kind of misleading to phrase it as the _chip_ solving it, when the focus
is on the _actuators_.

~~~
saulrh
They didn't even improve actuation. Instead, they appear to have used a
specially-constructed cube (no doubt designed to be suited for their machine)
and literally bolted their actuators to the center caps. I'd like to see them
do this with an unmodified vanilla cube like the other cube-solving machines
I've seen.

If you want impressive actuators, check out modern pick-and-place machines
[1].

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8qkaTsr2_o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8qkaTsr2_o)

~~~
eridius
Luc suggests that it looks like an off-the-shelf cube:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12935104](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12935104)

~~~
saulrh
Hmm, I guess that that's not a factor, then.

Bolting the caps to the actuators was the bigger trick anyway. Compared to
cages or grippers, dramatically reduced inertia and much stiffer, so less
damping required and it's easier to dump energy back into the actuators. I'm
half-tempted to call that "cheating", but I don't know what the actual rules
are - I doubt that this robot can "put down" or "pick up" the cube in less
than a minute or two. The older version had the cube actually soldered in.

~~~
rimantas
It is not a new idea and now need to bolt anything, just drill some holes:
[http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/watch-worlds-fastest-rubiks-cube-
ro...](http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/watch-worlds-fastest-rubiks-cube-robot-solve-
puzzle-just-one-second-1539934)

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Animats
Fast stepper motor control was solved a long time ago, and takes little
computer power. Watch this daisy wheel printer, a technology from the
1970s.[1] The print wheel is driven by a stepper motor, and for each
character, it must be spun to the correct position, brought to a precision
stop, and held while the hammer hits the selected letter tine.

Daisy wheel printers were the first mass-market device with multiple powered
mechanical moving parts coordinated entirely in software. The four actuators
(daisy wheel stepper, hammer actuator, carriage stepper, and platen stepper)
were connected only by electronics and software. Invented by David S. Lee.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTBM9JELUYQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTBM9JELUYQ)

------
Jun8
I think the achievement of building a cube that can withstand such quick moves
should also be mentioned.

~~~
chadgeidel
Oh, wow, this is solving a _physical_ cube.

~~~
conistonwater
I guess this mimics human competition settings: you're allowed to examine the
whole cube beforehand. Figuring out _any_ valid solution is really trivial,
esp. on a computer, it's just not hard.

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ntauthority
"The microcontroller AURIX™, one of the world’s most powerful minicomputers,
also contributed to the record-breaking effort: It is one of the essential
elements that enable autonomous driving."

I do not think the term 'minicomputer' was intended to mean... a
microcontroller.

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mavhc
Sub1 not reloaded solved in 0.887 seconds in Jan 2016

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVF_XUccMuo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVF_XUccMuo)

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aaron695
Sooooo this is a hardware problem.

Rubiks cubes are solved.

So it doesn't have to do the 'minimum' moves as they say, might waste time
working it out.

But even so it probably does the minimum moves.

Since I think that's mostly easy, just hard to prove.

But either way, even if you add 5 moves to use a lookup table, back to
hardware.

For humans rubiks cubes are very easy, just memorise the instructions. Books
have been out for decades.

[Edit] it's interesting that they imply it might take more moves for physical
reasons. Not sure if it's about destroying the cube or speed of turning.

~~~
MertsA
>So it doesn't have to do the 'minimum' moves as they say, might waste time
working it out.

Maybe they're counting moving the top and bottom at the same time as two
separate moves? I don't know why it wouldn't just be considered moving the
middle but that might be what they're talking about. They mentioned that it
doesn't do it in the minimal amount of moves on the basis that it would take
longer so I'm assuming that's it.

As far as the computational time needed to do so, it's absolutely trivial.
This thing is built around a single microcontroller and it can handle 6
stepper motors, solving the cube, vision processing, and state tracking all by
itself. The only thing impressive about this is how fast the cube is being
manipulated but even that might not be too impressive considering the fact
that they just attached stepper motors directly to the center piece of each
face as opposed to using an unmodified Rubik's cube.

~~~
Dylan16807
>They mentioned that it doesn't do it in the minimal amount of moves on the
basis that it would take longer so I'm assuming that's it.

It might often be useful to spin opposite faces in different directions. Two
moves by normal counting, but done in the time of one.

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m3kw9
They use rubber gripper to spin each side and known algorithms to solve. The
hard part is the speed of the visual recognition.

~~~
bizzleDawg
Even then, this seems like a poor choice of demonstration of visual
recognition capabilities since you only need to read the initial state and
then adjust it when you make a move. They've used stepper motors which
normally don't need feedback too, do movements can probably be done open loop.

Perhaps they do only use visual feedback for determining the state, which
would be a better demo, but I doubt anyone would be able know from that
article!

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seesomesense
This story is a testament to the poor quality of current journalism.

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13of40
'The computing chip, or the “brain” of the machine...'

Well, that's some serious 1983 Omni Magazine shit right there.

(Sorry to point it out, but it just seems like maybe the sort of thing we're
past having to ELI5 nowadays.)

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SimeVidas
Two popups within 10 seconds. Ban that site from HN!

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Cyph0n
I'm kind of surprised that the fastest machine is less than 10x faster than
the best human.

