In a classic underdog triumph, a group of undergraduates from Purdue University has built a robot that obliterated the world record for solving a Rubik’s Cube—surpassing the previous titleholder, engineering powerhouse Mitsubishi.
Their creation, dubbed Purdubik’s Cube, cracked the colorful puzzle in a mind-blowing 0.103 seconds. That’s nearly three times faster than the prior record of 0.305 seconds, held by a robot developed by Mitsubishi Electric, a company valued at nearly $80 billion.
“To put that in perspective, a human blink takes about 200 to 300 milliseconds,” explained team member Matthew Patrohay in a video from Purdue. “Our robot solves the cube before you even realize it’s moving.”
The innovative machine was designed and built by students from Purdue’s Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. It made its debut at the university’s SPARK competition in December 2024, where it took first place. The team has continued refining the robot since then, culminating in an official Guinness World Record certification.
The record-setting team includes Patrohay, Junpei Ota, Aden Hurd, and Alex Berta. Their robot not only breaks records—it pushes the physical limits of what Rubik’s Cubes can handle.
“The cubes themselves are now the weak link,” Patrohay said. “The plastic can’t take the speed. They literally shatter—pieces snap in half and fly apart.”
To make the high-speed solve possible, the team engineered a custom internal mechanism that could withstand the immense stress of rapid movements. High-speed footage shows the robot’s sleek metal arms executing the solve with mechanical precision.
For comparison, the fastest human Rubik’s Cube solver, Max Park, set a 3.13-second world record in 2023. While that time earned him global acclaim, it pales next to the machine’s performance.
Any attempt by a human to match Purdubik’s Cube would be disastrous. The human nervous system alone takes around 0.2 seconds just to send a signal—double the time it takes for the robot to complete the puzzle.
“If a person tried to match that speed,” Patrohay joked, “their muscles would tear, joints would shatter, and the skin on their hands might actually burn.”
In the battle of brains vs. bots, Purdue’s students just showed that sometimes, speed really is everything.
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