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Jigsaw: The Ultimate Puzzle-Solving Robot

Jul 17, 2024

Jigsaw: The Ultimate Puzzle-Solving Robot

Introduction

  • Jigsaw is a robot designed to solve jigsaw puzzles incredibly fast.
  • Claims it might be 200 times faster than the fastest human puzzler.

Human Puzzle-Solving Capabilities

Steps for Humans:

  1. Picking Up a Piece
    • Human hands with opposable thumbs are incredibly precise and dexterous.
    • 27 bones and 34 muscles contribute to strength and flexibility.
  2. Rotating the Piece
    • Simple due to evolved abilities and thumbs.
  3. Moving the Piece into Position
    • Entire arm movement, enabled by a capable arm and hand configuration.
  4. Deciding Placement
    • Involves complex brain functions for pattern recognition and spatial reasoning.
    • Human brains use 20% of our daily energy despite making up 2% of our body weight.
    • This makes humans superior at solving puzzles.

Creating Jigsaw, the Puzzle-Solving Robot

  • Challenge: Emulate human evolution and capabilities in a robot.
  • Steps to Solve:

Picking Up a Piece

  • Used a specialized suction cup and vacuum pump to replicate the action.

Rotating the Piece

  • Fine-tuned donut motor achieving 0.005 degrees precision.

Moving the Piece

  • Modified CNC router with upgraded ClearPath industrial servo motors.
  • Achieved precision of 0.0005 inches.

Deciding Placement

  • Most challenging step.
  • Simplified approach ignoring picture, focusing on edges.
  • Used phone camera to image pieces, converted edges into splines.
  • Algorithm matched splines by calculating the area between edge splines.
  • Ranked potential matches, iterated solving process till correct solution was found.

Initial Test Success with 12-Piece Puzzle

  • The process scaled up to a 1000-piece all-white puzzle.
  • Encountered challenges with scaling up, including compounded errors.
  • Solution: Implement a z-height encoder for feedback and a wiggle routine for fine adjustments.

Final Test and Human Challenge

  • After 3 years, Jigsaw solved the 1000-piece puzzle.
  • Challenge against Tammy McLeod, world record holder for fastest puzzle solving.

Human Puzzle-Solving Tips by Tammy McLeod

  1. Turn All Pieces Over: Start with all pieces facing up.
  2. Edge Pieces Strategy: Depending on puzzle type, edges might be done last.
  3. Group by Eye-Catching Features: Organize by color, texture, or patterns.
  4. Sort by Shape for Similar Looking Pieces: Final matches easier when sorted by shape.

Showdown Results

  • Jigsaw defeated Tammy McLeod in completing a puzzle of 1000 pieces, demonstrating robotic superiority in specific tasks like puzzle-solving.
  • Robot excelled due to precision and exhaustive algorithmic approach whereas human skilled pattern recognition couldn’t keep up.

Conclusion

  • Jigsaw represents the apex of robotic efficiency in a specialized task.
  • Showcases the possibilities in blending mechanical precision with algorithmic logic.

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