Human Controller’s Self-Solving Rubik’s Cube features a 3D printed core with servomotors that are programmed to match colors on each side. (Image credit: Human Controller via DMM.make)
The Rubik’s Cube has come a long way since it hit the market back in 1980, with 350-million cubes sold worldwide as of 2009. We’ve all seen videos of people who can juggle multiple cubes while solving them at the same time and the myriad of robots that can complete them in less than a second.
Now we can add auto-solve to the list of impressive cube feats, as Japan-based creator [Human Controller] designed a Rubik’s Cube that can solve itself without any hands-on intervention. Even though there are video and detailed images, not much is known about the technical details he used to create Self-Solving Rubick’s Cube, although I can hazard a guess.
While [Human Controller] created a larger version of the cube about a year ago, the newer version appears to be the same size as a regular Rubik’s Cube, although the inside is anything but the same. It looks as he 3D printed a spherical housing that encases six individual motors and gear trains that rotate each section.
It also looks like there are several Hall Effect sensor boards that detect the position of each face, along with a microcontroller that controls the components. Everything seems to be tied together with copper wire, and there’s a good possibility that there is a small Li-Po battery buried deep inside the housing to provide power to the cube. Below is a breakdown video showing how the cube is put together, which offers additional clues as to how it was designed.
Once the cube is scrambled, it sets about solving the puzzle to bring the correct colors to each side, and while it appears that it just records how many times each section is turned, much more is going on to get the correct sequence of colors for each side. To see more images and video of [Human Controller’s] Self-Solving Rubick’s Cube, check out his page at DMM.make.
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