JP Brown's Serious LEGO - CubeSolver

[Kire]

PREAMBLE

This robot solves the 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube®.

I started to think about this problem in about August of 2000. In Jan 2001 fellow Mindstorms forums user 'agiecco' announced his intention to work on a robotic solution and, simultaneously, I saw that Rubik's Cubes were on sale at www.target.com. So I bought a couple of cubes and started getting down to business...

I produced a 'late beta' version in mid-April 2001 that was a little clunky. The final version (presented here) is smooth and fairly reliable.

MECHANICS

To achieve a cube solution, you must be able to rotate the whole cube by 90° in two orthogonal axes, and be able to turn a face by 90° relative to the rest of the cube.

I opted to use the left and right grabbers to turn the faces; the yellow grabber can rotate the left face by an 90°; the green grabber can rotate the right face by 90°; or they can both turn simultaneously while the bottom grab is open to rotate the whole cube through 90°.

The bottom gabber holds the center 'slice' of the cube when the left or right grabber is turning a single face, and also provides a 90° turn for rotating the whole cube.

The tricky part is to re-orient the cube between moves to present the next face to be turned by the left or right grabber.

More: http://jpbrown.i8.com/cubesolver.html