Robot solves Rubik’s Cube in 15 seconds

A Rubik’s Cube has been sitting on Joe Ridgeway’s shelf since he was a child, but it wasn’t until he was studying at Rowan University that he fully embraced its challenge…

In a project that started in a Rowan course, Ridgeway and Zachary Grady, both senior electrical and computer engineering (ECE) majors, have built a robot that solves the cube in 15 seconds.

The Rubik’s Cube-Solving Robot, a year in the making, has earned the duo more than 17,000 hits on YouTube and a congratulatory note from Erno Rubik himself. And though it’s not yet official, they are confident, based on their research, that the robot is the fastest of its kind…

The robot wastes little time – after 17 moves, it twirls the descrambled cube in a modest celebration.

Ridgeway, 21, and Grady, 22, made the machine from scratch, they said, working under the guidance of Mease and ECE chair Shreekanth Mandayam and with mechanical-engineering help from graduate student Karl Dyer.