Cuber

Cuber is a Rubik's cube solving robot prototype built from three parts:

• a camera-based scanning UI
• a cube solver and desktop control app
• Arduino firmware for the servo-driven robot

This project was developed as my bachelor's thesis project.

The robot uses 3D-printed grippers to hold and rotate the cube while the software scans faces, computes a solution, and sends a sequence of rotations to execute.

This was a real hardware prototype, not a clean-room robotics framework. Some parts, especially the motion calibration in the firmware, are hardware-specific and were tuned by brute force because physical reality is rude.

Demo

Video demo:

Direct link: https://youtu.be/DdL1mxfUf3U

Photos

Alternate robot position during manipulation:

Robot prototype:

Scanning and control UI:

How It Works

1. The cube is scanned face by face using the camera-based interface.
2. The robot rotates the cube in front of the camera so different faces can be captured.
3. Detected colors are converted into a cube state representation.
4. A solver computes the move sequence.
5. The move sequence is sent to the robot controller.
6. The Arduino firmware drives the servos and executes the solution physically.

Repository Structure

• android-app/ Phone-side application for scanning cube colors, Bluetooth communication, and robot interaction.

• desktop-app/ Desktop Java application containing the cube solver, serial communication, and camera/control UI.

• arduino-firmware/ Arduino sketch files for the physical robot, including basic moves, face rotations, and calibration logic.

Communication

• desktop-app talks to the Arduino controller over serial.
• android-app uses Bluetooth RFCOMM for robot interaction.

Notes On The Code

• This is an older prototype project.
• The firmware contains hard-coded offsets and calibration-heavy logic tied to the physical build.
• The interesting part of the repo is the end-to-end system: scanning, solving, and physically executing the moves on a real robot.
• The codebase should be read as a working project artifact, not as a polished robotics library.
• Some hardware control logic is unapologetically prototype-grade and tuned to this specific robot.

Tech

• Android app for scanning and control
• Java desktop app
• OpenCV-based camera processing
• Cube solving library / two-phase solver integration
• Arduino firmware for servo control
• 3D-printed grippers and custom hardware linkage

Why This Repo Exists

This project shows a full-stack-ish robotics build across software, vision, and hardware control:

• computer vision for cube scanning
• solver integration
• serial / Bluetooth communication
• embedded control
• 3D-printed mechanism
• physical actuation and mechanical constraints

It is messy in the way real student robotics projects are messy, but it worked.