Jasmin's CUBOTino Project
The Rubik's Cube: A journey through history and records
Ernő Rubik and the creation of the Rubik's Cube
Hungarian architecture professor Ernő Rubik developed the prototype of a three-dimensional cube, the Rubik's Cube. In the years that followed, Rubik used the cube to illustrate three-dimensional space to his students. In 1980, cube fever spread around the world. But at first, only a few people managed to solve the puzzle themselves. It was not until SPIEGEL published a comprehensible solution in 1981 that the general public was able to align the different planes of the cube.
What is «God's number»?
«God's number» or «God's algorithm» is the smallest possible number of moves required to solve the Rubik's Cube in any given position. Scientists have spent a lot of time trying to figure out what this number is. The puzzle was only solved in 2010, 30 years after the tricky cube was introduced.
Why did it take so long?
There are over 43 trillion (that's 43 with 18 zeros!) possible starting positions for a Rubik's cube. There are 18 possible moves from each position. No computer in the world is able to calculate the optimal number of moves. In 1992, the physics and mathematics teacher Herbert Kociemba succeeded in writing an algorithm that reduced the possibilities to 20 billion. Modern computers can easily calculate this. This algorithm was improved in the following years by computer scientist Tomas Rokicki. The result? No matter what the 3x3 is, it can be solved in 20 moves. So the «number of God» is 20!
The CUBOTino Robot
CUBOTino Autonomous is a small, fully 3D printed robot that solves the Rubik's Cube using a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 and a PiCamera. The robot takes about 90 seconds to solve the cube. The PiCamera captures the state of the cube, while the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 analyzes the images and calculates a near-optimal solution using the Kociemba algorithm. CUBOTino Autonomous is an impressive example of how modern technology and 3D printing can be combined to solve complex tasks in a simple and accessible way.
The name CUbe+roBOT+ino
The name of the robot is CUBOTino. Besides the obvious combination of CUbe+roBOT, «ino» is the Italian suffix for small... a reference to Andrea Favero's origins and the robot's very small dimensions.
Jasmin's CUBOTino Project
The project was developed as part of the Future Day at the Microsoft Innovation Hub Zurich. Jasmin was excited about the idea of building her own robot. The project gives Jasmin the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in robotics, programming, and 3D printing.
The project steps can be broken down into
- purchasing components.
- ordering the CUBERTino connection board.
- installing the Raspberry Pi Zero 2.
- testing and adjusting the servos
- print 3D parts.
- assemble 3D parts
- fine-tune and operate the robot
- run CUBOTino to solve autonomous
Let’s now proceed and build the CUBOTino robot.
Special thanks to Andrea Favero, inventor of the CUPERTino Makers project. Chad Vanblokland, inventor of the CUBERTino Connection Board and for sharing the Gerber files to order it. And special thanks to the Microsoft Innovation Hub Zurich team, Rene Knöffel (the orchestrator) and Alberto Huber (the maker) for facilitating and supporting Jasmin's project.
6. Dec 2024
