VI Shots

View video in Quicktime format

There’s been some activity over the past year or so where people have been trying to create automated machines to solve the Rubik’s cube. At NIWeek 2007 which took place this past August, I had the chance to interview an applications engineer from National Instruments who described the system they put together to achieve this goal. As you can see from this video, the process is very involved. It requires imaging of the faces, processing the solution and executing the moves to produce the final completed cube. The hardware is expensive, the mechanics problematic and in the end, the demo fails to do the job. On the other hand, it’s a cool way to spend some time with some motion control hardware.Most of the time, the best solution to something is the one that is the simplest. Take a look at this Rubik’s cube automated solution that uses Mindstorms NXT. I am scared to see the budget difference between the two implementations. Daniele Benedettelli’s website provides more insight into how this was done. As you can see, the main problem of how to grip and rotate the side has been solved by using a socket type construction that wraps around all the cubes. This way, the stress of rotation is evenly distributed.

I’m going to inaugurate this blog with a post about an amazing man, Dean Kamen. The first time I had a chance to see him speak in person was at the 2006 NIWeek conference. He spoke of the process of invention and the ideas of some in upper management that think that invention and creativity is something that can be “managed” and has a predictable life cycle.

I found his talk enlightening because it gave some insight into the mind of a man that is truly an innovator of our times. Here are just two of the many slides he presented.

It’s possible that at the same time he gave this presentation, Dean was already working on his next innovation. Dean spoke at the TED conference and presented this preview of an extraordinary prosthetic arm at the request of the US Department of Defense.

This video clip taken at TED shows Dean explaining how he came around to eventually accepting the DOD challenge. It shows how empathetic Dean is to the human spirit and how he’s trying to help ease some of the suffering these soldiers are going through. In the world of robotics, the requirements imposed on the development of this prosthetic arm were an extreme challenge. The final demonstration in this video makes it look so easy.