Tilted Twister: Lego Mindstorms Rubik's Cube Solver

Special thanks to http://www.tiltedtwister.com for releasing free building instructions, operating instructions, and source code to the public!

This is a Lego Mindstorms robot called Tilted Twister. It uses 3 Motors, a touch sensor, and a Hitechnic color sensor (available at http://www.hitechnic.com) to tilt, rotate, and twist a cube to solve it. It also uses an Ultrasonic sensor to know when you place a Rubik's cube in its grasp, or if the cube falls off the turntable by accident.

What is really impressive about this robot, is how it can solve a Rubik's cube using only the elements of the retail kit of Lego Mindstorms (unless you are using a color sensor like me), and it can solve a cube without the use of a webcam, or a connection to a computer!

The robot first uses a motor attached to a color sensor to scan all the colors of a cube, as well as using the turn-table motor and the grabber-arm motor to assist in this. Then, it resolves the center, edge, and corner colors of the cube, and generates 3 solutions using an optimized "corners first" method. It picks the solution with the least face turns (moves), and begins solving the cube.

I have modified the robot a tiny bit by moving the color sensor up one level so that it can read the colors better. You could also use a light sensor for this robot, but then you would need to replace some colors on the cube or else the light sensor may not be able to see a difference in color between all 6 colors on the cube, therefore messing up the scanning and solving process of the robot.

Hope you enjoy! :)

Mindstormscreator a.k.a. Alex

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

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• tilted
• twister
• automoatic
• rubik's
• erno
• cube
• solver
• computer
• connection
• webcam
• mindstormscreator
• color
• sensor
• motor
• light
• arm
• grabber
• amazing
• rubotlego
• mindstorms

[danne6a]

Orange does it work!!!???

[Mindstormscreator]

@danne6a Yes...

[Mindstormscreator]

@zombiekillz4566 Yep, usually out-of-the-box store brand Rubik's cubes have poor turning quality.

[zombiekillz4566]

@Mindstormscreator I got it now. Thanks.  All I had to do is grease up the cube. It spins much better now

[Mindstormscreator]

@zombiekillz4566 Maybe are the gears that spin the cube skipping and causing it not to rotate a full 90 degrees? If the claw is releasing too early purely because of the program itself then I can't help since I didn't write it.

[zombiekillz4566]

@Mindstormscreator Well now it detects it. All the problem is when the claw clings on to the cube for the platform to spin it, it sometimes releases too early and the cube gets crooked

[Mindstormscreator]

@zombiekillz4566 Tweaking is all you can really do to fix the claw problem, I can't really help. And I don't know why the program is doing that, is there enough lighting for the robot to detect the cube colors properly? Maybe it is detecting the colors wrong and interpreting it as an impossible case.

[zombiekillz4566]

I gotta problem. One, when the claw pushes it sometimes, it get stuck slanted, and two, when it makes the high pitched sound sometimes it doesnt go.

[gijsvogels444]

@Mindstormscreator I already use the old version. Because u built this several times i knew where to find that one. But there are no more than 1 versions of the CubeSolver program for NXT 1, so i don't know how to fix this.

[Mindstormscreator]

@gijsvogels444 Sorry, but since I am not the developer of the programs, I don't know much about how to fix your problem. There has been a new version of this since I made mine, I guess make sure you are using the right programs for the right sensors, like don't use a program intended for the Mindstorms 2.0 color sensor with the HiTechnic color sensor.