A Mitsubishi robot in Japan set a new Guinness World Record for solving a Rubik’s Cube in just 0.305 seconds. Named after Tokui, the project’s leading engineer, the robot outperformed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology bot’s record of 0.38 seconds from 2018 and was significantly quicker than human record-holder Max Park’s “holy grail” time of 3.13 seconds in 2023.
Tokui told Guinness that shaving off time as much as possible was difficult but fun. He studied the videos of previous record holders and felt that the motor used in their machine was not up to par with Mitsubishi’s signal-responsive motors and an artificially intelligent color-recognizing algorithm proprietary to Mitsubishi.
On the first official attempt, Tokui discovered that the four-sided, quick-spinning mechanism was too hard on the puzzle and caused it to jam. However, after tweaking for 20 minutes, Tokui and his team were able to achieve a record-clinching success in late May. The success was thanks to Tokui’s expertise in motor-related products and his dedication to making the world a better place through technology.