Hacker News Reader

It wouldn't be doing any image processing during the solving phase. In fact, it's probably not doing any full stop, and just tracks the state of the cube (which starts in a known state) via dead reckoning.

Does it need to look at the cube again after it has observed the starting position?

No.

More accurately - probably not. It depends how the actuators work and whether they include optical monitoring of the twist.

If so, the solution won't need to monitor the colours, but it will need to make sure the actuators spin the sides accurately.

Otherwise - cube explosion.

They use stepper motors - same hardware that allows a budget 3D printer archive sub-mm movement without any feedback loops. Pretty sure they don't need to look at the cube again after scanning the starting position.

60fps is 16ms per frame.

Gah yes, don't know where that extra zero came from!!

Recognizing 48 colored dots in parallel in 160ms is not hard.

You mean 16 ms per frame?