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Have you ever been to a Maker’s Faire? It’s kind of like a creative science fair that’s held all over the world, where tech enthusiasts, engineers, hobbyists, and anyone with a creative and scientific mind can show off the things they’ve built and the things they learned as a result. It’s a place to show off your self-building Gundam models, automatic loot box tapping contraptions, circuit board business cards, and whatever other kind of cool gadget or creation you’ve made!
There was just a Maker’s Faire in Japan last month, and one of the most popular pieces was a Rubik’s cube that solves itself. It was shared by Twitter user @wyrm06, and Japanese netizens were so enamored with it that it quickly gained over 100,000 likes and retweets.
It looks like an ordinary Rubik’s cube, but somehow it magically floats above a table as its various sections twist and slide all on their own, slowly aligning all the colors. With the momentum of its adjustments it also slowly rotates in the air, which gives a really cool futuristic look to the old-school toy.
It does occasionally get stuck, and while it manages to work through some of the catches, at the end its creator had to pick it up and give it an adjustment to keep it going. But that tiny defect doesn’t detract from the device’s charm. @wyrm06 wrote, “It was kind of cute how it sometimes got stuck!”
▼ Here you can watch the cube solve itself all the way to the end.
Japanese Twitter was pretty impressed by the invention:
“Wow!”
“How the heck does this work?”
“This is the future, you guys. Seriously!”
“It’s like magic.”
“Personally I think the coolest part is that the guy who made it was wearing a Rubik’s cube shirt.”
“It feels like we’ve entered into a new era, lol. I’d love to know about the source code and the mechanisms behind how it floats and rotates!”
The cube is the work of Takashi Kaburagi, whose hobby is apparently creating and programming unique contraptions. On his YouTube channel, Human Controller, he’s uploaded a few videos about this and other creations like a “human controller”. But his main creation appears to be the self-solving Rubik’s cube; he was even featured on the official Rubik’s cube Twitter page.
Sadly, the self-solving Rubik’s cube isn’t for sale, but perhaps it will be one day. Then people like me who can’t solve a Rubik’s cube without looking it up on the Internet can have an even better way to impress their friends, by having a floating, self-solving cube on display in their house.
Source: Twitter/@wyrm06 via My Game News Flash
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- https://soranews24.com/2020/02/19/cool-automated-rubiks-cube-found-at-makers-faire-floats-solves-itself-blows-our-minds/
2 Comments
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Chris Shelton
The way it works is simple, it looks as though the cube acts as a wind-up toy, because it looked like the cube was doing the scramble backwards. Although, I may be wrong about that. But, the way it floats may be from a magnet inside of the cube, allowing it to float above another strong magnet inside or maybe underneath the table.
Djordje Djordjevic
I do not agree with Chris Shelton, I'm a puzzle enthusiast, with current record for 3x3 - Single 20.67 seconds. Not that impressive, but I want to say that I know what I'm talking about. The source code for that 3x3 controller is using standard (beginer) algorithms for solving itself. If you look closely, you can see that 3x3 is performing an algorithm called PLL - permutation of last layer, and OLL - Orientation of last layer.