World's fastest cube-solving robot built by students in jaw-dropping time
Solving a Rubik's Cube can take most people anywhere from a few minutes to a small eternity. But what if it could be done before you even knew it started? That's not a hypothetical — it's exactly what four undergrads at Purdue University just achieved.
And in the process, they didn't just set a new
Guinness World Record
— they demolished it.
Meet
Purdubik's Cube
: a lightning-fast robotic system built by students from Purdue's Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, which now holds the official Guinness World Record for the "Fastest robot to solve a puzzle cube" — with a jaw-dropping time of 0.103 seconds.
That's not just fast. That's faster than the blink of an eye.
To put that in perspective, the previous world record was 0.305 seconds, set by Mitsubishi Electric engineers in Japan in May 2024.
The Purdue team's creation is nearly three times faster.
The students behind the speed
The Purdubik's Cube team — Junpei Ota, Aden Hurd, Matthew Patrohay, and Alex Berta — officially received Guinness certification for their achievement.
The students poured hours — and in some cases, paychecks from co-op rotations — into building the robot. Their hard-earned experience also helped them gain corporate sponsorships, fueling their vision.
Purdubik's Cube made its public debut at SPARK, Purdue ECE's student design competition, where it took first place in December 2024.
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But the team didn't stop there. After the competition, they fine-tuned the system to perfection, blending speed, automation, and engineering precision at a level few thought possible.
The robot's secret sauce? A combination of machine vision for color recognition, custom solving algorithms, and industrial-grade motion control hardware from Kollmorgen. Every movement is precisely calculated, executed with sub-millisecond control, and optimized to maximize acceleration, deceleration, and mechanical efficiency.
The robot isn't just lightning-fast — it's also interactive. The team added a Bluetooth-enabled 'Smart Cube' that allows users to scramble the puzzle in real time. The robot mirrors each move, then solves the cube instantly the moment the scrambling stops.
And just how fast is fast?
'We solve in 103 milliseconds,' he added. 'A human blink takes about 200 to 300 milliseconds. So, before you even realize it's moving, we've solved it.'
Not just a record
Behind the scenes, Nak-seung Patrick Hyun, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, mentored the student innovators. 'This achievement isn't just about breaking a record, it pushes the boundaries of what synthetic systems can do,' Hyun explained. 'It brings us closer to understanding ultra-fast coordinated control systems like those found in nature.'
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