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iPhone App Solves Rubik’s Cube in 20 Moves or Better

This article is for those – like me – who still have difficulties solving Rubic’s Cube.
via Wired:

You take six pictures of your mixed up Rubik’s Cube using the iPhone’s camera — one photo per side. If you have an iPod Touch, you can also tap in the color combos manually. CubeCheater is able to recognize the placement of each colored square and generate a map of your cube. It then figures out the quickest path to solving the puzzle and gives you a set of easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions. The current guru of Rubik’s computer algorithms is Herbet Kociemba, creator of the open source Cube Explorer software program. Kociemba’s solver software is currently used by computer science students at universities to build cube-solving robots, some of which also use a camera and image-recognition tech to figure out the color patterns. Rubik cube solution algorithms and instructions have been around almost as long as the cube. The algorithms have been improved over time. The breakthrough is using image recognition and a device and interfaces to make it far easier for people to use. The “human enhancement” is made more widely available and accessible and easy to implement.

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Posted by kuehleborn on January 30th, 2009 Posted in Geeks Tagged as:

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