By I’ve always taken those Motorola Droid ads from Verizon with a grain of salt: I found it hard to believe that it did everything that the iPhone (or any of its competitors) don’t. It still can’t make me breakfast, do my laundry, or type these articles for me, but it can solve a Rubik’s Cube in under 25 seconds. ARM released a video a little more than a week ago showing the Droid sitting comfortably inside of a Lego-comprised contraption.
Using the Droid’s ARM-based processor, it assisted the mechanical mastermind in solving a Rubik’s Cube in under 25 seconds. Validity, you scream? Well, it does look like some software on the Droid was pre-configured to solve a specific cube setup (which is supported by the fact that they modified the cube before putting it inside of the machine) but let’s not rain on the parade too long – it’s still pretty cool. How long does it take you to solve a Rubik’s Cube?
[via Gizmodo]
Not long, the stickers are pretty easy to move.
The software “scans” the cube by making photo’s of each side (first part of the movie). With this information the solution is calculated and then executed. The same thing is done before, youtube is filled with video’s. Under 25s. is still very impressive though :)
WOOOW! This is so cooooool!
Yea, as @Joost wrote, that was not a “pre-configured” setup at all and was just pure scanning + calculation.
If the cube WASN’T scrambled before being put in the machine, now THAT would’ve been a supporting argument to the fact that the phone knew the specific scramble (since the machine would then have to scramble the cube itself) :)
Oh, and my personal record is 13.64sec
in a world of doesn’t Droid does
that’s multitasking for you! lol j/k bad joke
i love my little Android!
So what… I think that most phones would be able to do this, this is like making a video showing how Droid can calculate square root of 10 digit number. For humans very hard, but computers can calculate some specific task easily (square roots, rubik’s cubes).
I figured out how to take it apart and put it back together when I was 8… lol
What, no iCubeSolver app to solve this? Awww…..
Where can I buy this :) ?really…A would like to buy a prototype like this!
Haha preconfigured? *zzz* As someone wrote, check youtube! This is real
Ha, there actually is an iPhone app for solving Rubik’s cube, you just take a picture of he sides and it tells you how to solve.
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/01/iphone-app-solv/
Though if you’re a real geek, you can just solve it your self… since they come with directions and all.
Quite nice, but I still prefer the no-phone-required version http://tiltedtwister.com/
There is actually a sequence for Rubiks cube that if you follow you will solve it. Just go long enough. That could easily be programmed into a computer program and then just use pictures to verify that it is done. My brother had a copy of it and it always worked. Not matter how messed up the cube looked.
I believe it’s ARM powered, but not necessarily being done by the Droid on top. All we see the Droid do is take a video. That may be getting sent via Wi-Fi to the main robot CPU (as I don’t see space for a USB cable attachment.
My 11 year old son does it in 30 seconds. The cube wasn’t put in any special position prior. It’s just an algorithm and once you learn it, it’s easy.
This is the reason that Android devices are going to take over the world in the #1 OS!
My Droid Incredible could probably do it in 15 seconds … if the battery didn’t die somewhere about the 11-second mark. LOL.
This Android app looks very nice:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySHRQExSYVY
Unfortunately it is not (yet?) on the market.
Some very interesting reading about the maths behind is on Herbert Kociemba’s website:
http://kociemba.org/cube.htm
you should credit the people who give you these links :(
Yeah I’m starting to take the Droid commercials with a grain of salt as well…being u still can’t save heavy info to the SD card….if apple beats android to this….ain’t ganna look to cool for android