Ever Want To See A Robot Solve A Rubik's Cube Faster Than The Blink Of An Eye? No? Well, Here It Is Anyway

Learning how to solve a Rubik's Cube is one of those things that sometimes pops into my head out of nowhere and makes me think, "Hey, I should pick one of those up and learn," then I think about it for a couple more minutes, and I think, "Meh."

It's one of those things that is really hard to do, but will not impress anyone. It's like memorizing pi to a hundred places. 

Alright, cool for you, but you still probably went to prom by yourself.

But what has managed to impress the hell out of me is a group of Purdue University students who built a robot that can solve one of those maddening cubes faster than the blink of an eye.

That's not some cliché, either. I mean that in the literal sense.

They call this bad boy Purdubik’s Cube, and it obliterated the previous robo-Rubik's cube record set by engineers at Mitsubishi Electric last year. 

Their time? A paltry 0.305 seconds.

As you can see, the Purdue team obliterated it, solving the puzzle in 0.103 seconds. I bet they celebrated this accomplishment by heading down to Triple XXX Family Restaurant for some celebratory root beers after that (that's the only Purdue reference I know off the top of my head).

That really is incredible work from the team comprised of Junpei Ota, Aden Hurd, Matthew Patrohay, and Alex Berta.

Patrohay specifically said in an interview on Purdue's website that he has had his eye on this record for years.

"I always say that my inspiration was a previous world record holder," he explained. "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."

Well, mission accomplished.

Congrats, fellas.