Faster than a blink: 4 students set Guinness World Record with Rubik’s Cube-solving robot

At the beginning of the video, the robot solves the cube at regular speed, making the rapid resolution almost unbelievable. Later in the clip, it is slowed down to reveal the intricate workings of the robot as it solves the cube. The video has garnered 4.8 million views and is posted with the caption, “Fastest robot to solve a puzzle cube: 0.103 seconds by Matthew Patrohay, Junpei Ota, Aden Hurd, and Alex Berta of @purdue.ece.”

In the comments section, the Guinness World Records account said, “Blink and you’ll miss it!” A student named Matthew Patrohay from Purdue University’s Purdubik’s Cube team told the GSW, “We solve it in 103 milliseconds. A human blink takes about 200 to 300 milliseconds. So, before you even realise it’s moving, we’ve already solved it.”

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Responding to the video, one user commented, “If you actually time a blink the moment it starts, you literally can’t see it move. That’s amazing, congrats to everyone involved.” Another user wrote, “Respect for the Rubik’s cube for actually getting solved and not disintegrating in a million pieces.” A third user provided insight into the cube’s mechanics, saying, “By the look of it, the robot is aiming for a FMC solving rather than a speedcubing one. Speedcubing consists in resolving it the fastest way possible by using moves that are easier to do with your fingers. FMC is the Fewest Move Challenges. Since a machine isn’t limited by fingers’ movement, FMC becomes speedcubing. This is quite interesting.”

The robot, located on the Purdue campus in West Lafayette, uses machine vision for colour recognition, custom-solving algorithms optimised for execution time and industrial-grade motion control hardware, according to a Purdue University press release.

The team, consisting of engineering students Junpei Ota, Aden Hurd, Matthew Patrohay, and Alex Berta, initially designed their robot for the Spark Challenge, a design competition held in December 2024 at Purdue’s Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. After winning first place, they continued to enhance the robot with sponsorship support from Purdue’s Institute for Control, Optimisation, and Networks as reported by NBC News.