Lego Mindstorms Robots Solving: Sudoku and Rubik’s Cube

Posted on August 26, 2009  Comments (7)

LEGO Mindstorms Rubik’s Cube Solver

Tilted Twister solves Rubik’s cube fully automatically.
Just place the scrambled cube on Tilted Twister’s turntable. An ultrasonic sensor detects its presence and starts to read the colors of the cube faces using a light sensor. The robot turns and tilts the cube in order to read all the faces. It then calculates a solution and executes the moves by turning, tilting and twisting the cube.

The challenge was to build the robot using only the Lego Mindstorms NXT Retail-kit. And to make it completely independent, without need of being connected to a PC.
The Lego Mindstorms NXT Retail-kit contains three servo motors and four sensors (touch, light, ultrasonic and sound). How should I build the robot using only these items?
After a lot of experimenting I came up with a solution – If I tilted the whole robot, it would be possible for it to tilt the cube using only one motor, leaving the other two motors for turning the cube and for positioning the light sensor. Thus Tilted Twister.

Scanning the cube: 1 minute
Calculating a solution: 20 – 40 seconds
Executing the moves: 1 – 5 minutes. Average 4.5 minutes (60 faceturns)
Average total time: 6 minutes

Very cool. Related book: Building Robots With Lego Mindstorms

Related: Build Your Own Tabletop Interactive Multi-touch ComputerBabbage Difference Engine In LegoIf Tech Companies Made SudokuLego Autopilot Project UpdateRubick’s Cube Solving Lego Mindstorms RobotOpen Source for LEGO Mindstorms

7 Responses to “Lego Mindstorms Robots Solving: Sudoku and Rubik’s Cube”

  1. TK Pandey
    August 28th, 2009 @ 6:06 am

    That’s gr8!!! that robot is solving those problems, but what about us. I mean then we will do, just sit and watch?

  2. yingwen
    August 31st, 2009 @ 9:00 am

    That’s gr8!!! that robot is solving those problems, but what about us. I mean then we will do, just sit and watch?

  3. Harry Hilders
    September 1st, 2009 @ 6:19 am

    Lol, awesome vid! The whole idea behind Sudoku is staying sharp. When you’re able to built a robot like this I think you’ll be alright anyway! I wonder what the future holds for us when it comes to artificial intelligence and robots.

  4. Anonymous
    September 14th, 2009 @ 3:31 am

    awesome site…
    i love robots and electronic things.
    i had made project based on robots… great video..
    thanks…

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  6. Greg
    July 3rd, 2010 @ 2:49 pm

    Even I found it hard to solve sudoku. How can ‘it’ do it? Marvelous

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