Hans Andersson is a fellow who made a Lego Rubik's Cube solver (which, amazingly enough, is only one among many).
He has now gone one better.
Possibly quite a lot more than one better, actually.
Yes, this is a Mindstorms NXT robot that solves sudoku. It's got pretty good penmanship, too.
Like the Lego 3D scanner, Andersson's new creation isn't what you'd call the fastest of robots. But if you're not in a hurry, I'd say this robot does its job considerably better than the also-amazing Lego movie projector.
(Via, once again, the excellent TechnicBricks.)
24 August 2009 at 3:34 pm
Every time I build something cool with lego, someone always comes along and proves that not only are my creations just not cool enough, but also that it's possible to build a T-800 army and conquer the world with it.
As a matter of fact, it would not surprise me if the blackened heart of Skynet was a Mindstorms brick.
24 August 2009 at 5:04 pm
I'm ignorant of the powers of Lego. Can this be modified to fill in a Tax Return? Can it copy my signature?
24 August 2009 at 10:55 pm
SA Penguin - I demand that you submit to a Turing test to prove that YOU are not a Mindstorms NXT module.
25 August 2009 at 8:48 am
Very much like watching my girlfriend. Except for the cute "tongue tip sticking out of the mouth in concentration thing". But just as exciting.
25 August 2009 at 3:52 pm
I think I can scan a Sudoku (x) times faster than this bemicroprocessored Lego creation, but I think it can solve one about (x) times faster than I can... it would be an interesting race indeed.
Incidentally, the CAPTCHA numbers I got before I logged in were pixellated numbers similar to those that appear on the Mindstorms bot's screen.
26 August 2009 at 5:26 am
Damnit, and I thought I was all clever putting retractable landing gear and variable sweep wings on the planes I made with legos.:(
27 August 2009 at 2:35 pm
Now that I've watched it yet again, I have to ask. How do we not know that it was not programmed to put the right numbers in the right places in the first place?
The girlfriend asked this. So I am forced to be very skeptical now.
Yes honey, I asked.
27 August 2009 at 9:54 pm
The actual sudoku-solving algorithm is probably the least interesting thing here. (There are several well-known algorithms for that.) Even if it's just pre-programmed to fill in a previously specified grid (which I seriously doubt) it's a pretty amazing achievement to scan the contents (unless that's also faked) and write a correct solution, using just wheel rotation and the swinging arm.
And given that the same author has previously done the rubiks cube, for which he hands out the source code, I'm pretty sure that you'll be able to find the source code for this machine as well, soon.