Scope of the project

The idea was to build a Rubik's cube solver robot, as simple as possible, easy to implement at the hardware and software levels. I was checking a lot of designs, ideas, concepts and finally, in a casual manner, find a video posted by a girl from Korea, it was the idea I was looking for : As simple as possible.

Advantages

This model have advantages about:

Price of the material : total budget is low US$30, easy to find all the items of the BoM

Implementation time - one (1)day

Connections - one for each servo that is all - 6- jumpers for servos-2 jumpers for power source

Calibration : the arm design helps to the realignment of the cube's faces when these get some small errors originated in the rotation-Time to calibrate one day as maximum.

Calculation of distances and elements of the robot is quick and easy

Arduino code is reduced. clean code and the time to upload the stickers status could be optimized

Steps

1. Build Arm

Find a piece of wood flat to use as base of the model

With the popsicles sticks build the arm according to the photo, or I wish easily better than this one.

With the cube as reference built the rotating box- tolerance between the wall and the cube should be 3-mm

For the rotation box you need to incline it parallel to the arm at the point where the arm HOLD the cube.

Arm, Rotating Box, Servo tower

2. Connections

Connect the servos to Arduino using PWM input/output

Use a separate 5V DC power supply dedicated to the servos

Unify all the grounds - Servos, Arduino-Source

3. Software

Upload the software and call the serial monitor to check movements report, one by one. Previously you need to call python IDE, call kociemba module enter the cube status and solve it, then paste the solution in the arduino program.

Software Running-Kociemba algorithm

Obviously if you have more budget, you can use a camera and one program to do this in an automated way, using python and opencv. I developed this one for other model based on stepper motors:

Software to automate cube colors reading -Python & Opencv

Rubiks Fans T shirt

This is my T-shirt design, I am really a fan of the Rubik′s cube.

T-Shirt

Results

Please Watch the video.

Rubik's Cube Solver Robot