College students shatter Guinness World File for quickest puzzle cube-solving robotic

Fixing a Rubik’s Dice is a problem for most individuals. For a crew of scholars from Purdue College’s Elmore Household College of Electrical and Pc Engineering, it turned a chance to redefine the boundaries of velocity, precision and automation—and formally make historical past.

Meet Purdubik’s Dice—a high-speed robotic system that now holds the Guinness World File for “Quickest robotic to resolve a puzzle dice,” clocking in at a jaw-dropping 0.103 seconds. That is quicker than the blink of an eye fixed—and practically 3 times quicker than the earlier official report of 0.305 seconds, set by Mitsubishi Electrical engineers in Japan in Could 2024.

The Purdue crew, Junpei Ota, Aden Hurd, Matthew Patrohay, and Alex Berta, has not solely shattered that report, however now has the official Guinness certification to show it.

The story behind this record-breaking feat did not start in a lab. It began with Purdue’s Cooperative Training Program (co-op), which introduced Hurd, Ota, and Patrohay collectively.

“Our crew got here collectively due to the co-op program,” stated Hurd. “It helped us construct not solely the friendships that led to this collaboration, but additionally the skilled and technical abilities we wanted to really pull it off.”

The scholars invested time, and in some instances, cash earned throughout co-op rotations, into constructing the robotic. Their real-world experiences additionally helped them safe company sponsorships to assist the bold mission.

For Patrohay, the motivation goes again even additional.

“I all the time say that my inspiration was a earlier world report holder,” he stated. “Again in highschool, I noticed a video of MIT college students fixing the dice in 380 milliseconds. I assumed, “That is a extremely cool mission. I would like to try to beat it sometime.” Now right here I’m at Purdue—proving we will go even quicker.”

Purdubik’s Dice was first unveiled at SPARK, Purdue ECE’s scholar design competitors, the place it took dwelling first place in December 2024. The crew continued refining the robotic after the occasion, relentlessly pushing the boundaries of contemporary automation and high-speed computing.

The system makes use of machine imaginative and prescient for coloration recognition, customized fixing algorithms optimized for execution time, and industrial-grade movement management {hardware} from Kollmorgen. Each transfer is executed with finely tuned movement profiles to maximise acceleration, deceleration and mechanical effectivity, leading to exactly coordinated sub-millisecond management.

“From the times of the Apollo program, Purdue researchers and college students have been designing management techniques that allow groundbreaking new capabilities,” stated Sundaram. “The Purdubik’s Dice crew is a chief instance of how Purdue is bringing algorithms, robotics, and management collectively to realize nice feats of engineering.”

The crew additionally designed the expertise to be interactive. Utilizing a Bluetooth-enabled “Sensible Dice,” customers can scramble the puzzle in actual time, and the robotic mirrors each transfer—fixing the dice immediately as soon as the scramble is full.

Past the record-breaking velocity, the mission represents a fruits of years of studying and collaboration.

“What I actually love about it’s that senior design allowed us to convey collectively every part we have discovered,” stated Patrohay. “From our freshman yr on, you construct abilities—however this mission confirmed how all of them come collectively to create one thing significant.”

And that unimaginable velocity? It defies comprehension.

“We remedy in 103 milliseconds,” Patrohay stated. “A human blink takes about 200 to 300 milliseconds. So, earlier than you even notice it is shifting, we have solved it.”

Nak-seung Patrick Hyun, assistant professor {of electrical} and pc engineering, mentored the scholar crew.

“This achievement is not nearly breaking a report, it pushes the boundaries of what artificial techniques can do,” stated Hyun. “It brings us nearer to understanding ultra-fast coordinated management techniques like these present in nature.”

Milind Kulkarni, Michael and Katherine Birck Head and Professor of Purdue ECE, says the mission is a shining instance of the college’s dedication to hands-on studying and technical excellence.

“Take good college students, give them the instruments and alternatives, they usually’ll blow your thoughts,” stated Kulkarni. “4 undergraduate ECE college students, in lower than a yr, crushed a report set by a world-class crew at Mitsubishi. I all the time say we now have the perfect ECE college students within the nation—and this proves it. I could not be extra proud.”

Whether or not it is smashing data, demonstrating machine intelligence, or inspiring the following technology of engineers, Purdubik’s Dice is greater than a quick robotic; it is a world-class image of innovation at Purdue.