A TEAM of students and their ultra-speedy robot have broken the world record for the fastest time to solve a Rubik’s Cube.
The incredible clip shows the pronged robots completing the puzzle in a mind-blowing 103 milliseconds.
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Undergraduate engineering students from Purdue University in the US, Junpei Ota, Aden Hurd, Matthew Patrohay, and Alex Berta, worked on the project.
Their achievement has been recognised by the Guinness World Records site.
The previous record of 305milliseconds was set by a team at Mitsubishi earlier this year.
It was less than a decade ago when the record time by a robot dropped below a second for the first time.
The lightning speeds mean the infamous Rubik’s Cube can be solved faster than the blink of an eye.
“We solve in 103 milliseconds,” Patrohay said in a statement.
“A human blink takes about 200 to 300 milliseconds. So, before you even realize it’s moving, we’ve solved it.”
Patrohay said he was inspired by the super-fast minds of humans, who completed the 1970s puzzle long before robots did.
“I always say that my inspiration was a previous world record holder,” added Patrohay.
“Back in high school, I saw a video of MIT students solving the cube in 380 milliseconds.
“I thought, ‘that’s a really cool project. I’d love to try and beat it someday’. Now here I am at Purdue – proving we can go even faster.”
The team redesigned the cube to make sure it wouldn’t break apart when moved at such speed.
Purdubik’s Cube – the name of the team’s robot – used a machine vision system and special algorithms to see where the coloured blocks were and rotate them into the right slot.
The robot made its first public appearance at a student design competition in December.
But since then, the team behind it have made it faster and faster.
Nak-seung Patrick Hyun, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue, mentored the students.
“This achievement isn’t just about breaking a record, it pushes the boundaries of what synthetic systems can do,” said Hyun.
The current record held by a human is 3.05 seconds by seven-year-old Xuanyi Geng from China.
