LEGO Mindstorms Sudoku Solver

[@saikat44]

Scanning -> Thresholding - > Segmentation -> Thinning .... on a lego brick ... truly amazing :)

[@FlutterBug]

That moment when it suddenly yells "TWO!" ...it made me laugh for some reason x3

[@jamescooley8312]

This Lego robot has better handwriting than mine.

[@balthazarnaylor5874]

Agree

[@amber.mp4]

Because it's a frickin' robot!!

[@thatoneguy9582]

not really handwriting because it doesn't have a hand

[@amber.mp4]

more like robothandwriting...?

[@monke9746]

+jayhrod26 RIGHT!!!! LIKE WHAT THE F U EXPECT

[@ninjamaster224]

that motor and color sensor accuracy though...

[@KandiKlover]

Yeah it's a pretty neat setup. I have the 2.0 version and used this program on it. It was really cool.

[@ajstevens1652]

That awkward moment when you realise a machine has neater handwriting than you..

[@Bladesong0706]

I agree to that

[@Wolver_official]

Bladesong0706 I agree too :D

[@puct9]

marioccckc yep

[@itay.e7558]

XDD so true

[@MaxxHahn]

XD

[@finnaginfrost6297]

Any one of the functions shown here (image recognition, confidence with converting polar to Cartesian, solving, image processing, writing) are amazing.

[@uncouple]

i told my dad i could do a Sudoku faster than a computer, he didn't believe me

[@decee1157]

Could you explain how you made the program for that? In my head that is damn impressive!

[@mpezzi]

I am just impressed by how precisely it can move and have high repeatability for a lot of moves.

[@mwells219]

This kind of shit is how Skynet starts.

[@ockertoustesizem1234]

+Arjun Randhawa laddie?

[@5degreenegativerake]

The first wide scan with the light sensor determines which blocks have a number in them. Then it goes back and does a fine scan on each number, then does some image processing to determine the number, like it shows in the video.

[@DesignJunkie58]

Some guys have ALL the talent, show off! hehe

[@piro91a]

It's marvelous!! I can't believe that this sensor can see such small fonts properly. And the OCR!! Great job. You're my MASTER!

[@MasterGravitron]

Wow. This must have taken some programming. Does mind storm come with ocr or did you have to do that as well?

[@OktoberSunset]

The scanning was impressive. I didn't realise nxt light sensors were that good.

[@WonderCloudHD]

Make it divide by 0.

[@DlcEnergy]

I made a divider, do you want me to tell you what it says when i divide by 0?

[@JonasGarciaV]

DLC ENERGY Does it say "Your human mother."?

[@DlcEnergy]

Jonas G. My divider is 10 bits, so if i divide 9 by 0, the answer is (2^10)-1 Remainder 9 LOL Shit just got real... Whoever said it's impossible? They lie!

[@DlcEnergy]

Tyrannosaurus rekt True... The next question is, what can we do with the infinite result? F**k all.... :( And computers just try their hardest to narrow it down as much as possible.... 11111111111111111111111111.11111111111111111111111111111

[@hubertryciak]

What a joker haha xDD

[@63NY1]

thats simply amazing. that is he single most incredible algorithm i have ever seen on such a robot. how did u create such an accurate movement, scanner, number recognizer, sudoku solver, and number writer? its amazing

[@speedalavistaracing4659]

First phase: scanning. 2nd phase: Solving the game 3rd phase: saying game over

[@chinmaygupta1530]

I must say, very innovative thinking. One of the best mindstorm robots I have come across. The programming must have been so hard!

[@landfillbaby]

this thing's handwriting would make a good font.

[@forcefulfour]

It is really cool how it can write numbers very well!

[@masterbuilder4708]

when it said 2 I jumped XD

[@OldTimeyJunk]

Its amazing how these things can solve the day-to-day routine!

[@x46andtwo]

The noise it makes sounds better than most modern music.

[@BrowserError]

I really love the simplicity of the machine!

[@beanies4811]

Just WOW! This is genius!!! How long did it take you to program this???

[@franknerd2412]

nxt has a light sensor and a color sensor.you dont't have to use a "read" number option, just use a variable

[@MrFliederLP]

Which sensor did you use for recognizing/reading the numbers? Great work!

[@prinzeugen4911]

MrFliederLP that would have been the light sensor

[@jacobstern4630]

TOESKATS is that mumbo jumbo!!!

[@prinzeugen4911]

Jacob Stern yep

[@rgbelastung8532]

The colour sensor

[@territrades]

we are programming such a roboter right now, so I can imagine how hard it was to program this. Very nice work, indeed.

[@Realgaps]

If you're smart enough to make this then you probably don't need it to solve Sudoku problems for you anyway.

[@zaya8449]

But why do it yourself when you have robots to do your bidding?

[@otherlego]

i dont care, its cool as shit

[@Uvisir]

heard about doing stuff when you come home from work because you enjoy it?

[@konstantinosfousteris2952]

awesome comment

[@MichaelJHuman]

As a programmer, I have a slight idea of how much work is required to scan the puzzle, resolve the OCR into numbers, apply the solver, then write the solution. I am impressed.

[@NULUSIOS]

Fantastic.

[@franknerd2412]

no, the light sensor, you ave to buy seperately. But you could do it with the 2.o kit probably

[@Kenttheclark]

I'll be fun to race this machine.

[@maurerpe]

The high res scans of the numbers take a long time (by necessity, due to hardware limitations) . The robot only does the high res scan of squares with numbers in them. In general, harder sodoku puzzles start with less numbers. I think this means the robot will solve "harder" puzzles faster than easier puzzles.

[@fmaz1952]

How does the OCR works ?

[@Artillerytactics]

Anyone else smile in amazement when the robot started writing the numbers?

[@xaviertrahan6820]

If I get an EV3 for Christmas what model should I do between EV3RSTORM and GRIPP3R

[@susanmorrow8938]

EV3RSTORM!!!

[@xaviertrahan6820]

+susan morrow too late I already built everstorm

[@lemon3389]

there exist NXT programs for reading number, they just scan what the case look like and associate it with a previously entered scan of number: it makes it recognize the number

[@mozkitolife5437]

Giving a child a fish, I see...

[@entozoon]

Absolutely amazing! Considering it recognises the grid and numbers with just a light sensor mounted on a scara style arm, solves it and also draws the solution. My mind is suitably BLOWWWN

[@splintercellfool1]

use appropriate filters like a PDI filter, it will be able to recognize the black lines a lot more accurately. If not then make the ambient light really strong so that the reflection of your sensor is less apparent.

[@MrHgbf]

HOW!?!?!

[@dumle29]

math. and lots of it :P

[@VeeBot]

LEGO Mindstorms motors have a strange "Brake" effect, where they will reverse a bit if they go too far, even a minuscule amount. The differences you see are the motors moving too far and then trying to "Make up" for it.

[@fmaz1952]

Would probably be faster to solve by hand ;)

[@LydiaPuppy]

the point of this isnt to be practical. its just to show off how someone could take a lego machine not intended for this, and make it solve sudoku puzzles and write numbers.

[@fmaz1952]

+Shao i know, hence my smiley at the end ... ! Have a good day !

[@patelskush]

This is an awesome Mindstorm robot!

[@wmutter1]

and i thought i was good

[@SuperMariozify22]

It was mesmerizing to watch the robot write. Wow. Just wow.

[@brandthedog]

When I was a kid I was excited to find a cool shaped space windshield in my lego box.

[@iamloudmusic]

First and foremost, I'm highly impressed generally speaking. It's just impressive. I'm also impressed on another level that the pen didn't dry out and that the battery didn't go flat :D

[@ThinkCleverAndSmart]

That big program must use all of the memory on the NXT!

[@lemon3389]

they are called Lego Technique, the Mindstorm pieces only are the sensor and other stuff

[@matyasarany7408]

This is a perfect robot and program it perfect

[@Orangestar1]

You can see that it scans the numbers at the beginning using a light sensor.

[@lennartschreiber233]

Pretty awesome build! But wouldn't it make more sense to have an axis for a forward movement of the arm and one for a sideways movement? I guess this would make it faster and let it write better. However, it's great and I would probably not be able to build such a machine

[@Hughsie28]

I'm working with these NXT bricks in my University, we're teaching school pupils how to program them from a young age, its going really well But bloody hell that program is beautiful, very impressive!

[@MekazaBitrusty]

Nice. Funny how the bit we find hard, it does very fast but the easy bit, reading and writing take it so long. I never knew you could do stuff like this with NXT.

[@angelramirez171]

That number voice scared the SHIAAAT OUT OF MEEE

[@carlosjosearcilacortes876]

What a great idea for a robot.

[@Sredleg]

The "2" voice scared the hell out of me!

[@times05]

Wow, that's pretty awesome. I mean solving sudoku algorithms have been done before, not trivial and not sure how fast it would be on an nxt brick by brute force. Then there's the number scanning algorithm, I'm sure some library was used here, though still not trivial getting it to work. The most impressive part is the writing part, never thought nxt was precise enough to do printing like that. Amazing stuff.

[@aschmidt100]

There should definitely be a better scanning device like a camera above it or something. But a sudoku solver is just bizarre! congratulations.

[@MisterNinty100]

if you made this,you are a genius

[@BeBeHu]

I thought it only ha s a color sensor, how do you use the sensor to read the numbers? Or is it another type of sensor? Very Cool

[@Subjektiv1]

you could do the reading in two steps using a light sensor. first you do a rough sweep over the entire board and record any dark regions (those contain numbers) then you split each dark region into an imaginary grid (rows and columns) and move the sensor to the bottom left of that grid (you'll probably need quite alot of whitespace around the numbers), sweep the sensor from left to right (scanning one row of the grid) and record the darkness of each imaginary grid cell. once the first row is scanned you move forward a tiny bit, scan the cells in the next row, subtract the darkness from the cell in the same column in the first recorded row(since the scanner will cover multiple rows) and record the results in the second row, repeat for the rest of the rows subtracting the darkness from the previous x rows (you'll have to tweak that number based on how accurate and close to the paper your sensor is) once all that is done you have a rough black&white image that you can clean up and work with to figure out what number it is.

[@BeBeHu]

Very Cool!!

[@davide_pgr]

Tomorrow are gonna be 10 years

[@MegaManiaman]

that thing is neat! I didn't know which ones were there at the beginning and which ones it drew

[@TheRealSamWalton]

Can you send me the NXT-G program for this? It's Awesome!

[@Phygar1]

The OCR was the most impressive part imo, which I don't think the average person would think. It's all very nicely made though.

[@fierwall5]

that is pretty alright hand writing

[@MartinSchmidt204]

I believe they were referring to the programming and design of the robot.

[@greenaum]

It would then need a way of erasing wrong numbers, writing guesses in pencil, and take about 50 years to run. Actually solving the puzzle is probably the simplest bit of this, implementing optical character recognition, and making a mechanically-scanning camera from light-sensor and a cart with a swinging arm, is genius! I wonder if the Mindstorm's CPU does the character-recognition itself? I'd guess that it does, I think they're quite powerful.

[@autotrasportatore]

Congratulations!! You're a Genius!!

[@rbaleksandar]

Well done, mate. This is really great!

[@diegourena1329]

I am a currently taking a degree in programming(java) and when I see what can be done with this kind of toys I feel fascinated. I also would like to learn about robotics, in your opinion what kind of knowledge should I gain to create this type of inventions??

[@Firebird356]

Absolutely fantastic !! Blew my mind !!

[@adityamenon]

awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! aside from a couple of other, very personal family moments, I think that's the cutest thing I ever saw in my life!!! :) This is beautiful... I never knew you could so much with lego, I'm buying a set right away!

[@programagor]

Most of the time was spent by reading and writing numbers. The actual solving starts at 2:26 and ends at 2:27, so if it wasn't speed-up, it only took 1 second. I doubt you can do that.

[@ChiliFrog]

so, the mindstorms have a scanner, pretty cool

[@mishanya8228]

Круто, никогда бы не додумался такую сделать!

[@atomicsteameng]

The paper reflects more light then the numbers obviously its sensing the differentials between a the two

[@projex5894]

In 2 years this video will be 10 years old

[@shailpatel3841]

Now only 1 year left

[@robotics-wh9hf]

Only a few months now

[@HarmanMotorWorks]

Holy crap that's awesome! Well done!

[@bananaproduction84]

THIS IS SO SMURFING AWSOME !!!!!!

[@TheHades98]

that sudoku is a SPY!

[@jholbrook]

@SMK963 assuming it was programmed with NXT-G, there's a block called 'sound' where you can record your own sound or use a pre-recorded sound.

[@honghayun5886]

Sudoku as your homework and you have this, let the solver do it >:3

[@pcbheaven]

That is an excellent job! My congratulations to you! I will feature this in my site today

[@thePavuk]

this is incredible

[@bsaget98]

i am in love with this robot

[@nutzeeer]

i love to see them work :3

[@ervinasroblox3]

Fucking awesome as heck, its like it has a mind of its own

[@Thorralf83]

excellent work, Hans Andersson

[@ScottBeebiWan]

i want to see more of it running :) i like it, it'll help my mom to see if she is totally wrong or in the middle or right (or if she is 0-3 stars)

[@ChaoMystero]

It takes longer to determin what the numbers are and to write them in that it dose to comptue the algorithm

[@salehag7255]

This is really really cool.

[@MegaMech]

wow that is awesome, pure awesomeness not bad writing either

[@bwhiteballer0365]

Why are people disliking this video!!?? That was amazing! Nice work!!

[@HarmonicaMustang]

I love it's numbers! Although it takes quite a long time (no offense) it works beautifully! Well Done!

[@iCantSay]

Wow, Legos have really changed since I was a kid.

[@BuddyHi100]

That robot has really good hand-writing. :o