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Four Purdue students turned a class project into a world-record-breaking robot that solves Rubik’s Cubes faster than the blink of an eye, blending friendship, tech mastery, and bold ambition. Credit: SciTechDaily.com
A team of Purdue engineering students built a lightning-fast robot—Purdubik’s Cube—that now holds the Guinness World Record for solving a Rubik’s Cube in just 0.103 seconds.
Fueled by co-op experiences, personal inspiration, and university support, the students combined machine vision, custom algorithms, and industrial hardware to create a robotic system so fast it finishes before you can blink.
Record-Breaking Speed: Redefining Puzzle Solving
For most people, solving a Rubik’s Cube is a brain-teasing challenge. But for a group of engineering students at Purdue University, it became something much bigger—a chance to push the boundaries of speed, precision, and automation, and officially make history.
Their creation is called Purdubik’s Cube, a lightning-fast robotic system that now holds the Guinness World Record for the “Fastest robot to solve a puzzle cube.” It completed the task in just 0.103 seconds. That’s quicker than the blink of an eye, and nearly three times faster than the previous record of 0.305 seconds set by engineers in Japan in 2024.
The team behind the achievement—Junpei Ota, Aden Hurd, Matthew Patrohay, and Alex Berta—did more than just break a record. They earned official recognition from Guinness World Records for their incredible engineering feat.
Engineering Friendship: The Team Behind the Bot
This story didn’t start in a high-tech lab. It began with Purdue’s Cooperative Education Program, which connects students with real-world industry experience. That’s where team members Hurd, Ota, and Patrohay first crossed paths.
“Our team came together because of the co-op program,” said Hurd. “It helped us build not only the friendships that led to this collaboration, but also the professional and technical skills we needed to actually pull it off.”
They invested their time—and in some cases, money earned during their co-op rotations—into building the robot. Their hands-on experiences also helped them land sponsorships to bring their ambitious idea to life.
For Patrohay, the dream started even earlier.
“I always say that my inspiration was a previous world record holder,” he said. “Back in high school, I saw a video of MIT students solving the cube in 380 milliseconds. I thought, ‘That’s a really cool project. I’d love to try and beat it someday.’ Now here I am at Purdue—proving we can go even faster.”
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SPARKing Success: A Design Competition Debut
Purdubik’s Cube was first unveiled at SPARK, Purdue ECE’s student design competition, where it took home first place in December 2024. The team continued refining the robot after the event, relentlessly pushing the limits of modern automation and high-speed computing.
The system uses machine vision for color recognition, custom solving algorithms optimized for execution time, and industrial-grade motion control hardware from Kollmorgen. Every move is executed with finely tuned motion profiles to maximize acceleration, deceleration and mechanical efficiency, resulting in precisely coordinated sub-millisecond control.
The project was co-sponsored by Purdue’s Institute for Control, Optimization and Networks (ICON). Shreyas Sundaram, Marie Gordon Professor of ECE and co-director of ICON, sees the achievement as part of Purdue’s long tradition of engineering innovation.
“From the days of the Apollo program, Purdue researchers and students have been designing control systems that enable groundbreaking new capabilities,” said Sundaram. “The Purdubik’s Cube team is a prime example of how Purdue is bringing algorithms, robotics, and control together to achieve great feats of engineering.”
Interactive Innovation: Scramble and Solve in Real Time
The team also designed the experience to be interactive. Using a Bluetooth-enabled “Smart Cube,” users can scramble the puzzle in real time, and the robot mirrors every move — solving the cube instantly once the scramble is complete.
Beyond the record-breaking speed, the project represents a culmination of years of learning and collaboration.
“What I really love about it is that senior design allowed us to bring together everything we’ve learned,” said Patrohay. “From our freshman year on, you build skills—but this project showed how they all come together to create something meaningful.”
Milliseconds of Magic: Human Blink vs Robot Speed
And that incredible speed? It defies comprehension.
“We solve in 103 milliseconds,” Patrohay said. “A human blink takes about 200 to 300 milliseconds. So, before you even realize it’s moving, we’ve solved it.”
Nak-seung Patrick Hyun, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, mentored the student team.
“This achievement isn’t just about breaking a record, it pushes the boundaries of what synthetic systems can do,” said Hyun. “It brings us closer to understanding ultra-fast coordinated control systems like those found in nature.”
Milind Kulkarni, Michael and Katherine Birck Head and Professor of Purdue ECE, says the project is a shining example of the school’s commitment to hands-on learning and technical excellence.
“Take brilliant students, give them the tools and opportunities, and they’ll blow your mind,” said Kulkarni. “Four undergraduate ECE students, in less than a year, crushed a record set by a world-class team at Mitsubishi. I always say we have the best ECE students in the country — and this proves it. I couldn’t be more proud.”
Whether it’s smashing records, demonstrating machine intelligence, or inspiring the next generation of engineers, Purdubik’s Cube is more than a fast robot, it’s a world-class symbol of innovation at Purdue.
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