Self-solving Rubik's Cube

Re:Self-solving Rubik's Cube by zeptomu on Monday September 24, 2018 @08:16AM (#18057016)

That does not really matter I think. The cool part is that they very able to build a cube that looks similar like Rubik's but has electronics and motors embedded that are able to turn it.

Solving the cube with a computer is a solved problem for a long time and there are myriads of algorithms. Granted the solutions are not perfect (i.e. using the minimum number of steps needed which is always <= 20), but mostly come close (~25 steps).

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Re:Self-solving Rubik's Cube by adrianmonk on Monday September 24, 2018 @02:42PM (#18060195)

I think it has psychological significance.

It's one thing to have an object that violates expectations by taking action that an outwardly similar object does not. It's a surprise move that turns the tables on the person interacting with the object. (You could almost view it as a threat or a power dynamic thing.)

Having those actions be as intelligent as possible raises this surprise to another level. If I fiddled with it for 5 minutes and it put it back in 30 seconds, I'd feel even more like I just got owned by the object.

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Re:Self-solving Rubik's Cube by benmowa on Monday September 24, 2018 @12:23PM (#18058982)

note too a replay solution could have infinite steps to have to reproduce, assuming its not optimized to take any shortcuts to jump to a re-occurring state.

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