subject: Cool project idea - cube solvers, and midterm info
CS3102 (Theory) Students,

Check out the cool robotic lego Rubik's cube solvers (and also listed here), especially the world's fastest cube solver"CubeStormer II", which can solve the 3x3x3 cube in an average of about 5 seconds!

A robotic cube solver would make a great course project (and there are dozens of different ways to implement one, as you can see from these videos; some can even be implemented using only a single set of Lego Mindstorms kit).

RE the midterm, we agreed that the pickup window will be between 12 noon on Thur Mar 20 through 5pm Mon Mar 24, and you may work on your midterm for up to six consecutive hours (counting from when you first look at it). This take-home midterm will be open-books / open-notes (but no collaborations, nor Google searches, etc.) And as promised, all midterm questions will come from the posted problem sets, so your best strategy would be to solve as many problems from these sets as you can (especially Problem Set 2).

Take care,

Gabe


Dr. Gabriel Robins
Professor of Computer Science
Department of Computer Science
School of Engineering and Applied Science
University of Virginia
151 Engineer's Way
P.O. Box 400740
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4740
(434) 982-2207
robins@cs.virginia.edu