Robots rocks Rubiks cube in a split second

All around the world, robots have their minds set on one thing - total domination of the Rubik's cube.

The latest world record attempt at solving Erno Rubik's puzzle box took place in Germany using a robot called Sub1. And the makers got the name from the fact that this little machine can consistently solve a cube in less than a second. They quite naturally made a video about it, though because the feat itself is so short they felt the need to pad the rest of it with dub step and erratic camerawork.

Observe. The mechanical magic begins at 0.38.

The Sub1 uses a series of webcams to glance at the current state of the cube and goes to work, in this case producing a solution in just 20 moves. That's a very low number, and certainly a help when it comes to hitting a potential new world record. The data still has to be verified by Guinness which should have an update soon.

So how are the humans doing? Well just last November a young man called Lucas Etter became the first person to solve a 3x3 cube in under 5 seconds, with an official time of 4.90 seconds. So if the war between humans and robots comes down to solving Rubik's cubes, we're basically screwed.