A pair of English engineers have managed to combine two of our favourite childhood toys by creating the, Rubik’s Cube solving, world record-breaking, Cubestormer 3 robot out of LEGO Mindstorm sets.

The Cubestormer 3 was able to solve a Rubik’s Cube in just 3.253 seconds shaving just over two seconds off of the previous world record held by its predecessor, the Cubestormer II, which could only manage the frustrating task of solving the cube in around five and a half seconds. To put the achievement into perspective the world record for a human solving a Rubik’s Cube Mats Valk in 2013 when he managed to solve one in 5.55 seconds.

The latest version of the Cubestormer project replaces the dual core Galaxy S II that powered the last one with an octa-core ARM powered Samsung Galaxy S4 running a custom-made Android app which drives a host of motors, actuators and arms that have been pilfered from multiple LEGO Mindstorm sets. The project’s two engineers David Gilday, who is a principal engineer at ARM, and Mike Dobson spent around 18 months putting together the Cubestormer 3 in their spare time.

While writing the app and building the Cubestormer 3 were challenges in and of themselves, one of the biggest challenges for the team was to optimise the robot’s ability to solve the cube by “ensuring its motor and intelligence functions were properly synchronized”. The Cubestormer 3 uses the same sort of speed cube which is used by human competitors in competition which allows it to begin twists before the last set of twists have completely aligned all of the sides, which according to Gilday “means (that) the robot is effectively mirroring the same kind of judgement and dexterity that a human speed cuber has to apply.”

[Image, ARM]