First they beat humans in Jeopardy, now the machines have conquered the Rubik's cube. A group of students from Melbourne's Swinburne University of Technology have created the robot, aptly named Ruby. Ruby was able to solve the Rubik's Cube in a record 10.18 seconds, the fastest time by a robot. It beat the old record of 18 seconds set by Rubot II, developed by Peter Redmond of Ireland.

Ruby was developed by a team of six Swinburne students as part of their double degree in Bachelor of Engineering (Robotics and Mechatronics)/Bachelor of Science (Computer Science and Software Engineering) according to a report from iTWire. The team is composed of David and Richard Bain, Daniel Purvis, Jarrod Boyes, Miriam Parkinson and Jonathan Goldwasser.

According to Professor Chris Pilgrim, Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies the robot works by scanning the six sides of the cube before using a software algorithm to solve the puzzle. Not only is the robot fast but apparent Ruby the robot also has anger management issues. The students had to build a perpex box around the robot because it throws the cube or destroys it if it doesn't solve the puzzle.

The professor also hopes to see a man versus the machine showdown in the future. The fastest human Rubik's Cube solver, Feliks Zemdegs duking it out with Ruby in a no holds barred contest. Zemdegs who is based in Melbourne set the record last year with his time of 6.77 seconds. The professor is confident Ruby will be able to beat the human because Zemdegs had 15 seconds to scan the cube an advantage that Ruby will easily beat.

Visitors to Swinburne's open day can view the amazing robot on August 21, 2011. For now we humans can take comfort in the fact that we still beat a machine in Rubik's Cube solving, at least until the Zemdegs-Ruby showdown.