German engineer Albert Beer has continued to work on his Sub1 robot since achieving the record for the Fastest robot to solve a Rubik's Cube back in January 2016.
The updated Sub1 Reloaded has a new Infineon processor chip and it is now able to decipher the famously difficult puzzle in just 0.637 seconds – beating the previous record of 0.887 seconds.
Within a fraction of a second of the robot’s camera senses being lifted, it finds the solution and the six mechanical arms unscramble the puzzle perfectly in 21 moves.
How does it work? The computer receives two pictures of the cube, identifies the color of each piece and calculates a solution with Tom Rokicki's extremely fast implementation of Herbert Kociemba's Two Phase Algorithm. The solution is then handed over to an Arduino-compatible Infineon AURIX™ microcontroller board which orchestrates the 21 moves of six high performance steppers, to turn each side of the cube.
The attempt was arranged by semiconductor manufacturer Infineon Technologies and took place at the electronica trade fair in Munich, Germany at the end of 2016.
"We want to show that problems can be solved much more efficiently using microelectronics," explained spokesman Gregor Rodehueser to the BBC.
Since then Guinness World Records has spent some time carefully reviewing the evidence, including ensuring that the cube and the pre-scrambling met all WCA standards, before confirming the new record today.
The Fastest time to solve a Rubik’s cube by a person stands at 4.73 seconds, which was achieved by Australia's Feliks Zemdegs in December 2016.