Little Coloured Bricks

We love our Legos and this generation loves Sudoku as well –no matter how puzzling it may be. When Hans Andersson, a Swedish programmer bought the futuristic Lego Mindstorms for his two beloved daughters, he began tinkering with the toy himself. After days of working on the do-it-yourself robots, Andersson created one that can solve Sudoku in just minutes.

Now that is amazing yet as mind boggling as your regular Sudoku. Andersson calls his creation The Sudoku Solver. It solves Sudoku puzzles by scanning the entirety of the puzzle with a built in light sensor. It then identifies the missing numbers located in the blank squares through image processing and algorithm. Whatever the math Andersson did to make this work, it sure is a fun yet very intelligent Lego robot.

The Swedish programmer seemed to have enjoyed the DIY robots more than his daughters and when asked about the algorithm applied in the system of The Sudoku Solver he said, “….since the Mindstorms processor is rather slow, and since it doesn’t allow for recursive functions, it took some care to optimize it…”

Well whichever the case, Andersson’s robot can still solve Sudoko faster than I can and that is the magic of it. Andersson could not shake off his fascination with Lego Mindstorms though, after The Sudoku Solver he created “Tilted Twister” yet another interesting robot toy. Tilted Twister can solve and figure out the ins and outs of a rubic’s cube in a matter of six minutes. Imagine the dread of solving it in days on end and this little robot does it in minutes! Now that is like instant coffee.

Don’t you just love robots! They are here and they are invading our playtime and in the near future they will be part of the more physical aspects of games –a game of soccer maybe? Who knows?