Purdue Students Shattered Guinness World Record for fastest Rubiks Cube Solving Robot

AI Summary: Four electrical engineering students at Purdue University created "Purdubik's Cube," a robot that shattered the Guinness World Record for the fastest Rubik's Cube solve with a time of 0.103 seconds, nearly tripling the previous record set by Mitsubishi Electric. This achievement, developed using machine vision, custom algorithms, and industrial hardware, showcases the students' integrated engineering skills and pushes the boundaries of high-speed robotics and control systems with potential implications for various industries.

May 16 2025 14:39
In a laboratory at Purdue University, four electrical engineering students have accomplished something extraordinary: they've created a robot that solves a Rubik's Cube faster than you can blink.

Their creation, aptly named "Purdubik's Cube," recently shattered the Guinness World Record for the fastest robot to solve a puzzle cube, clocking in at a staggering 0.103 seconds. To put that in perspective, it takes a human about 200 to 300 milliseconds just to blink – making this robot nearly twice as fast as our reflexive eye movement.



The previous record of 0.305 seconds, set by Mitsubishi Electric engineers in Japan just months ago, seemed impressive until the Purdue team obliterated it. Their achievement isn't just marginally better – it's nearly three times faster.

"We solve in 103 milliseconds," said Matthew Patrohay, one of the student engineers. "Before you even realize it's moving, we've solved it."

The team – consisting of undergraduates Junpei Ota, Aden Hurd, Matthew Patrohay, and Alex Berta – didn't have the resources of a major corporation. Instead, they relied on skills developed through Purdue's Cooperative Education Program, their own investments, and corporate sponsorships they secured along the way.


For Patrohay, this achievement fulfills a long-held ambition:

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.'

That "someday" arrived sooner than he might have expected. After first unveiling their creation at SPARK, Purdue's student design competition, where it won first place in December 2024, the team continued refining their robot, pushing it to perform even faster.



Creating a robot that operates this quickly requires sophisticated engineering across multiple disciplines. The Purdubik's Cube system integrates:

• Machine vision technology for instantaneous color recognition
• Custom solving algorithms optimized specifically for execution time
• Industrial-grade motion control hardware from Kollmorgen
• Finely tuned motion profiles to maximize acceleration and deceleration
• Sub-millisecond control coordination

The Institute for Control, Optimization and Networks (ICON) at Purdue co-sponsored the project, seeing it as a continuation of the university's tradition of control systems innovation that dates back to the Apollo space program.


What makes this project particularly interesting is its interactive component. The team designed their system to work with a Bluetooth-enabled "Smart Cube," allowing users to scramble the puzzle themselves. The robot mirrors each move in real-time and then instantly solves the cube once the scramble is complete.

This interactive element transforms what could have been merely a speed demonstration into an engaging experience that showcases the potential applications of high-speed robotics and control systems.


For these students, the record-breaking robot represents more than just an impressive feat of engineering – it embodies the culmination of their undergraduate education.

"What I really love about it is that senior design allowed us to bring together everything we've learned," Patrohay said. "From our freshman year on, you build skills—but this project showed how they all come together to create something meaningful."


While solving a Rubik's Cube at unprecedented speeds may seem like a novelty achievement, the technology behind it has broader implications.

"This achievement isn't just about breaking a record, it pushes the boundaries of what synthetic systems can do," said Nak-seung Patrick Hyun, the assistant professor who mentored the team. "It brings us closer to understanding ultra-fast coordinated control systems like those found in nature."

These advancements in high-speed automation, machine vision, and coordinated control systems could influence developments in manufacturing, robotics, and even medical technology, where precision and speed are often crucial.


Milind Kulkarni, head of Purdue's Electrical and Computer Engineering department, emphasized this point: "Four undergraduate ECE students, in less than a year, crushed a record set by a world-class team at Mitsubishi."

Their success demonstrates how university innovation can sometimes outpace industry, especially when talented students are given the resources, mentorship, and freedom to pursue ambitious projects.

As robots continue to evolve, speed records like this one help push the entire field forward. Each milestone challenges engineers everywhere to rethink what's possible and develop new approaches to overcome existing limitations.

The Purdubik's Cube now stands as both an achievement and a challenge – a new benchmark that will undoubtedly inspire the next generation of engineers to ask: "How much faster can we go?"

Official: Guinness World Record