A team of Purdue University students recently set a new Guinness World Record with their custom robot that solved a Rubik’s Cube in just 0.103 seconds. That was about a third of the time it took the previous record-setting bot. But the new record wasn’t achieved by simply building a robot that moves faster. The students used a combination of high-speed but low-res camera systems, a cube customized for improved strength, and a special solving technique popular among human speed cubers.The Rubik’s Cube-solving robot arms race kicked off in 2014, when a robot called Cubestormer 3 built with Lego Mindstorms parts and a Samsung Galaxy S4 solved the iconic puzzle in 3.253 seconds — faster than any human or robot could at the time.Over the course of a decade, engineers managed to reduce that record to just hundreds of milliseconds.Last May, engineers at Mitsubishi Electric in Japan claimed the world record with a robot that solved a cube in 0.305 seconds. The record stood for almost a year before the team from Purdue’s Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering — Junpei Ota, Aden Hurd, Matthew Patrohay, and Alex Berta — shattered it. Their robot has come to be known as Purdubik’s Cube. Bringing the robot record down to less than half a second required moving away from Lego and, instead, using optimized components like industrial motors. Getting it down to just 0.103 seconds, however, required the team from Purdue to find multiple new ways to shave off milliseconds.“Each robot that previous world record-holders has done has kind of focused on one new thing,” Patrohay tells The Verge. When MIT grad students broke the record in 2018, they opted for industrial hardware that outperformed what previous record-holders had used. Mitsubishi Electric chose electric motors that were better suited for the specific task of spinning each side of the cube, instead of just hardware that moved faster.However, the first thing the Purdue students improved was actually the speed that their robot could visualize the scrambled cube. Human speed cubing competitors are allowed to study a Rubik’s Cube before their timer starts, but the robot record includes the time it takes it to determine the location of all the colored squares. The students used a pair of high-speed machine vision cameras from Flir, with a resolution of just 720x540 pixels, pointed at opposing corners of the cube. Each camera can see three sides simultaneously during exposures that lasted as little as 10 microseconds.The Purdubik’s Cube’s high-speed Flir cameras use wide-angle lenses, and the Rubik’s Cube appears in only a very small region of their field of view. The color detection system relies on low-resolution images of the puzzle, which speeds up processing times. Photo: Matthew Patrohay / Purdue UniversityAlthough it may seem instantaneous, it takes time for a camera to process the data coming from a sensor and turn it into a digital picture. The Purdubik’s Cube uses a custom image detection system that skips image processing altogether. It also only focuses on a very small area of what each camera’s sensor sees — a cropped region that’s just 128x124 pixels in size — to reduce the amount of data being moved around.Raw data from the sensors is sent straight to a high-speed color detection system that uses the RGB measurements from even smaller sample areas on each square to determine their color faster than other approaches — even AI.“It’s sometimes slightly less reliable,” Patrohay admits, “but even if it’s 90 percent consistent, that’s good enough as long as it’s fast. We really want that speed.”Despite a lot of the hardware on Purdue’s robot being custom-made, the team chose to go with existing software when it came to figuring out the fastest way to solve a scrambled cube. They used Elias Frantar’s Rob-Twophase, which is a cube-solving algorithm that takes into account the unique capabilities of robots, like being able to spin two sides of a cube simultaneously.The team also took advantage of a Rubik’s Cube-solving technique called corner cutting where you can start to turn one side of the cube before you’ve finished turning another side that’s perpendicular to it. The advantage to this technique is that you’re not waiting for one side to completely finish its rotation before starting another. For a brief moment, there’s overlap between the movements of the two sides that can result in a significant amount of time saved when you’re chasing a world record.High-speed footage of the Purdubik’s Cube reveals how it uses the corner-cutting technique to overlap movements and reduce the time it takes to solve the Rubik’s Cube. Photo: Matthew Patrohay / Purdue UniversityThe challenge with corner cutting is that if you use too much forceand don’t time things perfectly, you can physically break or even completely destroy a Rubik’s Cube. In addition to perfecting the timing of the robot’s movements and the acceleration of its motors, the students had to customize the cube itself.Guinness World Records follows the guidelines of the World Cube Association, which has a long list of regulations that need to be followed before a record will be recognized. It allows competitors to modify their cube, so long as it twists and turns like a standard Rubik’s Cube and has nine colored squares on each of its six sides, with each side a different color. Materials other than plastic can be used, but the color parts all need to have the same texture. To improve its durability, the Purdue team upgraded the internal structure of their cubes with a custom 3D-printed version made from stronger SLS nylon plastic. The WCA also allows the use of lubricants to help make cubes spin more freely, but here it’s used for a different reason.“The cube we use for the record is tensioned incredibly tight, like almost hilariously tight,” says Patrohay. “The one that we modified is very difficult to turn. Not impossible, but you can’t turn it with your fingers. You have to really get your wrist into it.” When solving the cube at high speeds, the lubricant helps to smooth out its movements while the increased tension reduces overturns and improves control so time-saving tricks like corner cutting can be used.Each of the robot’s six servo motors connect to the Rubik’s Cube center squares using a custom-made metal shaft that spins each side. Photo: Matthew Patrohay / Purdue UniversityFaster servo motors do help to reduce solving times, but it’s not as simple as maxing out their speed and hoping for the best. The Purdubik’s Cube uses six motors attached to metal shafts that slot into the center of each side of the cube. After testing several different approaches the team settled on a trapezoidal motion profile where the servos accelerate at speeds of up to 12,000,000 degrees/s2, but decelerate much slower, closer to 3,000,000 degrees/s2, so the robot can more accurately position each side as it comes to a stop.Could the Purdubik’s Cube break the record again? Patrohay believes it’s possible, but it would need a stronger cube made out of something other than plastic. “If you were to make a completely application-specific Rubik’s Cube out of some sort of carbon fiber composite, then I could imagine you being able to survive at higher speeds, and just being able to survive at higher speeds would then allow you to bring the time down.”See More: #how #college #students #built #fastest

This Record-Setting Robot Can Solve a Rubik’s Cube Faster Than You Can Blink Designed by a group of undergraduate students at Purdue University, the robot completes the puzzle in 0.103 seconds "Purdubik's Cube" was developed and built by undergraduate students Junpei Ota, Aden Hurd, Matthew Patrohay and Alex Berta. Purdue University Blink and you might miss it: A new robot developed by college students can solve a Rubik’s Cube in 0.103 seconds, setting a new world record. “We solve in 103 milliseconds,” says Matthew Patrohay, one of the electrical and computer engineering undergraduates at Purdue University who designed and built the robot, in an announcement from the university. “A human blink takes about 200 to 300 milliseconds. So, before you even realize it’s moving, we’ve solved it.” The high-speed robotic system—named “Purdubik’s Cube”—now holds the Guinness World Record for the fastest robot to solve a puzzle cube. Patrohay, along with fellow students Junpei Ota, Aden Hurd and Alex Berta, officially set the record in a laboratory on the university’s campus in West Lafayette, Indiana, on April 21. Purdubik’s Cube handily beat the previous record of 0.305 seconds, which was set last year by a Mitsubishi Electric robot. “said, ‘You know what? I think we can do better,’” says Milind Kulkarni, who leads the university’s electrical and computer engineering department, in a video accompanying the statement. Though developing the robot was a team effort, it was Patrohay who initially spearheaded the project. His love affair with the scrambled, multicolored puzzle cube dates back to the fourth grade. “There was a competition, and you get a prize if you could solve it, and I could never solve it,” he tells NPR’s Ailsa Chang. “And I wanted to win the prize, so a few friends and I tried to learn how to solve it.” Then, while he was in high school, he heard about a pair of MIT students who’d designed a robot that solved a Rubik’s Cube in 0.380 seconds in 2018. He was immediately intrigued. “I thought, ‘Hey, someday, I should try and beat that,’ and here I am,” he tells NPR. Purdue ECE students shatter Guinness World Record for Fastest Puzzle Cube-Solving Robot Watch on When Patrohay got to Purdue, he learned everything he could to make his dream a reality. After spending time building the necessary skills for the project, the group actually constructed the robot in just one semester for their senior design class. To develop a robot that could solve a Rubik’s Cube in record time, the students integrated several systems and technologies, including machine vision for color recognition, custom algorithms and industrial-grade motion control hardware. They also optimized the Rubik’s Cube itself, designing a strong, custom internal core to hold all the pieces together as it moves at a rapid pace. “The cubes themselves just kind of disintegrate,” Patrohay says in the video. “The pieces just snap in half and fall apart.” Though 0.103 seconds is fast, Patrohay is optimistic that Purdubik’s Cube might be able to work even faster. “We’re going to give one last little effort to try and push below 100 milliseconds, so we can say we’re even faster,” he says in the video. “But realistically, I think 103 milliseconds is going to be very tough to beat.” The Rubik’s Cube was invented in 1974 by Hungarian architect Ernő Rubik. Five decades later, it’s the most popular puzzle toy in the world—especially among “speedcubers,” or competitors who try to solve it as quickly as possible. For humans, the world record for solving a 3x3x3 rotating puzzle cube is 3.05 seconds, set by Xuanyi Geng of China a little more than a month ago. “Speedcubers” have also set world records for solving them while underwater, while running 100 meters, while blindfolded, while roller skating, while upside down and while juggling. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday. #this #recordsetting #robot #can #solve

Destiny 2 developer Bungie is once again battling accusations of plagiarism after yet another artist accused the studio of "lifting" aspects of their artwork, this time for its upcoming sci-fi shooter, Marathon.After numerous artists and a writer came forward claiming Bungie used their work without authorization or credit, yet another artist is claiming their work was used in the environments of Marathon. In screenshots taken from Marathon's alpha playtest accompanying the tweet, artist Antireal alleged they could see distinct icons and graphics they designed, some of which were originally shared on social media years ago in 2017."Bungie is, of course, not obligated to hire me when making a game that draws overwhelmingly from the same design language I have refined for the last decade, but clearly my work was good enough to pillage for ideas and plaster all over their game without pay or attribution," the artist wrote in a statement posted to X/Twitter."I don't have the resources nor the energy to spare to pursue this legally but I have lost count of the number of times a major company has deemed it easier to pay a designer to imitate or steal my work than to write me an email. In 10 years, I have never made a consistent income from this work and I am tired of designers from huge companies moodboarding and parasitising my designs while I struggle to make a living."Bungie responded within hours. Though it did not publicly apologize, it said it had now launched an investigation, attributing the "issue" to a former Bungie artist, and reached out to the artist concerned.Play"We immediately investigated a concern regarding unauthorized use of artist decals in Marathon and confirmed that a former Bungie artist included these in a texture sheet that was ultimately used in-game," the team said in a statement. "This issue was unknown by our existing art team, and we are still reviewing how this oversight occurred."We take matters like this very seriously. We have reached out toto discuss this issue and are committed to do right by the artist. As a matter of policy, we do not use the work of artists without their permission."To prevent similar issues in the future, we are conducting a thorough review of our in-game assets, specifically those done by the former Bungie artist, and implementing stricter checks to document all artist contributions. We value the creativity and dedication of all artists who contribute to our games, and we are committed to doing right by them. Thank you for bringing this to our attention."This is not the first time Bungie has been accused of lifting ideas from elsewhere. In October, the studio was slapped with a lawsuit after a writer claimed the studio stole plot elements from his story and used them for content in Destiny 2's 2017 storyline, The Red War. Bungie recently tried to get the lawsuit dismissed but a judge denied the request as Bungie scrambled to provide evidence having since "vaulted" the content so it is no longer publicly playable.Just weeks before that lawsuit was filed, Bungie launched a different investigation to ascertain how a NERF gun based on Destiny 2's iconic Ace of Spades was lifted almost wholesale from fanart designed back in 2015, including every brush stroke, scratch, and smudge on the weapon.Vikki Blake is a reporter, critic, columnist, and consultant. She's also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky. #marathon #developer #bungie #launches #039thorough

May 13, 20258 min readHow Trump’s National Weather Service Cuts Could Cost LivesWeather experts warn that staff cuts at the National Weather Service that have been made by the Trump administration are a danger to public safety as tornadoes, hurricanes and heat loom this spring and summerBy Andrea Thompson edited by Dean VisserA house submerged in floodwaters, inPointe-Aux-Chenes, Terrebonne Parish, La. Mark Felix/Bloomberg/Getty ImagesJust more than 100 years ago, on March 18, 1925, a tornado slashed across the U.S. Midwest with no warning at all and killed 695 people—a massive number for a single outbreak. Today those in a twister’s path get a take-cover notice eight to 18 minutes before a strike on average. And as recently as 1992, what looked like a minor tropical disturbance intensified with shocking speed into Hurricane Andrew. There was little time to prepare for the storm, and much of the resulting property damage in South Florida was massive. But by last year, forecasters could give several days’ warning that the then approaching storms Helene and Milton were likely to abruptly morph into monsters.Such improvements have cumulatively saved thousands of lives and likely hundreds of billions of dollars across the U.S. And they happened only through concerted federal government investment in studying weather events, improving computer forecast models, and making continent- and ocean-spanning efforts to collect the data that make those forecasts possible. Now meteorology experts are urgently warning that the Trump administration’s staff firings and funding cuts at the National Weather Service (and its parent, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) threaten to disrupt these crucial operations and turn back the clock on forecasting.“Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life,” wrote five former NWS directors from both Democratic and Republican administrations in an open letter on May 2.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Ultimately, storm experts say, disruption caused by existing and proposed cuts will hit multiple fronts. An understaffed and underfunded NWS could mean that a tornado warning doesn’t come in time, that a hurricane forecast is off just enough so that the wrong coastal areas are evacuated or that flights are less likely to be routed around turbulence. “The net result is going to be massive economic harm,” said climate scientist Daniel Swain during one of his regular talks hosted on YouTube. “As we break these things, eventually it will become painfully and unignorably obvious what we’ve broken and how important it was. And it’s going to be unbelievably expensive in the scramble to try and get it back—and we might not be able to get it back.”The NWS’s budget pays for weather services that benefit industryFor the past 20 years, a little more than 4,000 NWS staff members have put together 24-7 forecasts for the country’s approximately 300 million people every day of the year. “We have [a more] efficient level of [staff compared] to the number of people we’re serving than any other country in the world by two orders of magnitude,” says Louis Uccellini, who was NWS director from 2013 to 2022 and signed the open letter.The NWS punches above its economic weight, too: it costs the average American about $4 per year. “It’s a cup of coffee,” says JoAnn Becker, president of the National Weather Service Employees Organization, a union that represents the NWS and several NOAA offices. With one third of the U.S. economy—from farming to trucking to tourism—being sensitive to weather and climate, the NWS provides an overall benefit of $100 billion to the economy. This is roughly 10 times what the service costs to run, according to an American Meteorological Society white paper. Recent improvements to hurricane forecasts alone have saved up to $5 billion for each hurricane that hit the U.S. since 2007, according to a report by the National Bureau of Economic Research—a nonpartisan, nonprofit economic research organization. In comparison, the NWS’s entire budget for 2024 was less than $1.4 billion.NOAA Hurricane Hunters (L-R) Lt. Cmdr. Chris Wood, Flight Engineer Rusty Dittoe, and Hurricane Aircraft Commander Adam Arbitbol flies towards Tropical Storm Debby on Aug. 3, 2024.Luis Santana/Tampa Bay Times via ZUMA Press Wire/Alamy Stock PhotoWith the growing number of disasters that cost the country $1 billion or more in damages, weather experts have advocated for increasing the agency’s staff and budget. “NOAA is a $12-billion agency trapped in a $5-and-a-half-billion budget,” said Craig McLean, then acting chief scientist of NOAA, in testimony to Congress three years ago.Even before President Donald Trump took office, the NWS was already about 5 percent below the staffing level the service has considered adequate as it scrambled to catch up to a spate of retirements. After the NWS’s first wave of firings and early retirements under the Trump administration, staffing at the service’s 122 field offices across the country has dropped to a 19 percent vacancy rate. Fifty-two offices are now considered “critically understaffed,” meaning a shortage of more than 20 percent. Some branches are down by more than 40 percent. “We’re small offices,” Becker says. Each weather forecast office has about 25 to 30 people. “When you’re down four people, it starts to hurt,” she adds. “There comes a point where you don’t have enough people to cover everything.”The lack of noticeable degradations in forecast quality so far is “because of the valiant efforts of the people who remain in these now critically understaffed roles in field offices,” Swain said in his recent video. “But the cracks are really now starting to show.”Concerns raised over balloon launches, radar and Hurricane Hunters One of the most noticeable effects of the staffing shortage has been the sharp reductions—and even cancellations—of the weather balloon launches that are supposed to happen twice a day at every forecast office across the country. These launches all happen at the same time to give forecasters a three-dimensional snapshot of the atmosphere. Those data are then fed into weather models and are crucial to making sure the models start with the most accurate possible information. This is particularly true during tornado outbreaks or prior to a hurricane landfall. For the former, forecasters need to understand the atmospheric patterns that influence an outbreak to better pinpoint where tornadoes might spin up. And understanding atmospheric patterns over the country is critical to forecasting where a hurricane will make landfall. The lack of balloon launches “is going to degrade weather forecasts to some extent,” Swain said in his video. “And the effects may not be obvious until there’s a major tornado outbreak or hurricane landfall downwind that doesn’t go so well.”The suspensions and cancellations might be somewhat less worrisome if they were evenly spread out, but they are largely clustered in the center of the country—right upwind from Tornado Alley. The fact that a function as essential as balloon launches is being cut is a clear sign of how much staff are feeling the crunch, Swain said.The map shows where weather balloon launches continued as normal (black), have been curtailed (orange) or have been suspended entirely (red).Chris Vagasky, created with OpenStreetMap data (CC BY 2.0)Another concern regards forecasting equipment, such as the nation’s Doppler radar system, which is the only tool that forecasters can use to spot tornadoes inside storms systems, allowing for better warnings. Staffing cuts and spending freezes mean that if any radars or other equipment go down, offices may not have the staff or money to repair them, Becker and others say.Experts are also concerned about the firings of two of NOAA’s Hurricane Hunters—members of the crew that flies aircraft, crammed with state-of-the-art equipment, into the middle of tropical storms and hurricanes to gather data. Research has shown that including these data clearly makes hurricane forecasts more accurate and reliable. Diminished crews mean some flights could be cancelled, leaving coastal communities more vulnerable to approaching storms.The NWS also issues specific aviation, shipping and space weather forecasts—all under threat from the current and proposed cuts.Some of the NWS offices will become so short-staffed that they may have to operate part-time, the agency’s former directors warned in their open letter. This could include making fewer highly tailored forecasts, as well as performing less outreach on social media and to local officials and emergency managers. Such outreach has been a major goal of the NWS to make sure communities are better prepared before extreme weather hits. The forecasters in the NWS offices are “community experts” who have close working relationships with emergency managers, school districts and other local decision-makers, Becker says. Without those proactive efforts, “you’re basically watching the storm,” Uccellini says.Being down so many people means “you have to cut corners—and cutting corners is dangerous with lives and property at stake,” says Jeff Masters, a writer at Yale Climate Connections and a former Hurricane Hunter at NOAA. Uccellini likens what is happening to stretching a rubber band: “You can stretch and stretch it, and then it breaks,” he says. “And when it breaks, you can’t put it back together again.”Meteorologists, associations speak out against cutsNeither artificial intelligence forecasts nor private weather companies will be able to fill in the gap; both rely on the data NOAA collects. Without robust NOAA data collection, “the Weather Channel, Accuweather ... will be unable to function as they have,” says Rick Spinrad, who served as NOAA administrator from 2021 to 2025.People across the vast weather community, from individual meteorologists to professional societies such as the American Meteorological Society and the National Weather Association, have all expressed alarm about the cuts to NOAA and the NWS and have urged the Trump administration to reverse course. Industries that depend on weather and climate data, such as the insurance industry, have also spoken out. The Union of Concerned Scientists has also sent congressional leaders an open letter to urge them to reinstate NOAA’s staffing and funding that has been signed by more than 3,300 scientists and other experts.Morale is extremely low in offices across the NWS, according to Swain’s video and to Uccellini and many others who know current employees at the agency. Funding cuts are forcing many employees to bring in their own toilet paper and soap. There is also “an extreme culture of fear” Swain said in his video, with “threatening and demeaning communications” from agency leaders that have called employees “lazy” and “low productivity.”“Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life." —Five former NWS directors in a May 2 open letterIn their open letter, the former NWS directors contradicted this characterization, speaking of the dedication of the agency’s employees: “They will often sleep in weather forecast offices to make sure poor weather conditions don’t stop them from being on time for their shifts to do their critical work. They stay at their stations during hurricanes, tornadoes and other severe storms, even when extreme weather affects their own families.”The implemented and proposed cuts indicate that those making them have little understanding of how the service works and have not taken time to look for actual inefficiencies, Spinrad and Masters say. Swain and others have concurred. Instead, Spinrad says, the Trump administration has made “easy” cuts such as firing “probationary” employees (those who were newly hired or recently promoted, making them easier to fire). This approach “is trying to use a chainsaw instead of a scalpel to fix the patient” in terms of addressing bureaucratic inefficiencies, Masters says.In response to a detailed list of questions regarding the cuts, the concerns others have expressed about their ramifications and the Trump administration’s willingness to abide by any budget set by Congress from Scientific American, the NWS’s press office wrote, “The National Weather Service is adjusting some services due to temporary staffing changes at our local forecast offices throughout the country in order to best meet the needs of the public, our partners and stakeholders in each office’s local area. These adjustments are also temporary and we will continue to fulfill our core mission of providing life-saving forecasts, warnings, and decision support services.”“In an era of climate change causing increased extreme weather, we should be spending more on NOAA and the National Weather Service, not less,” Masters says. “This is a very poor way to spend our tax dollars.” المصدر: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-trumps-national-weather-service-cuts-could-cost-lives/ #How #Trumps #National #Weather #Service #Cuts #Could #Cost #Lives