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Comment by teh_infallible | Hacker News Reader

This is incredibly impressive, but I wonder- how does a project like this get proposed and funded? Why would Mitsubishi devote resources to solving a Rubik’s Cube as quickly as possible?

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Projects like these attract attention at trade shows. Probably for their servomotors and controls division, because their customers will be interested in doing similar high-speed manipulation for more practical applications, and showing off that you can do this using these products gives a good feel for other things that you might also be able to do with them.

So it’s basically a marketing project? Are you aware of some articles I can read about these types of projects and their economics as well as ROI?

Exactly this. My dad still demonstrates his CubeStormer and other Lego robots on behalf of Arm at trade shows, because both the Lego robot control unit and the phones used for camera/solver are Arm-powered. And CubeStormer 3 set the previous record over 10 years ago at this point.

CubeStormer was a hobby project though, so not the same as this robot which looks like it entirely uses company resources.

It’s a visceral demo that execs and customers can interact with to demonstrate Mitsubishi’s expertise in robotics. It’s both for PR purposes (improving the value of the brand) + sales (come talk to us for your robot needs) + defending the R&D departments budget (hey exec, isn’t this thing we built really cool? We’re actually accomplishing progress on long term goals, not just collecting a paycheck and doing nothing).

2 things it's a marketing exercise but it's also R&D an actual test use case for high speed precision motors/controllers. I can imagine this video is almost nsfw for folk building industrial machines.

I know what you mean, but... Not safe for work - because it's their job?

  - How can we market our world-class precision manufacturing skills more effectively
  - What if we make a robot that solves Rubik's cube at insane speeds
  - Sounds cool, see you in 3 months

It's a demonstration of extremely fast and precise motors.

So they can sell giant expensive industrial robotics.

It might be a promotional flex. Here we are talking about Mitsubishi.

for all we know this is one of their test cases

Nice that some places still hire testers.

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