Solving Sudoku through Lego Mindstorm

Sudoku is one of the most popular papers and pen games of all times. From making a long journey look like a walk of a few minutes to making someone lost in the “fun” pages of the newspaper, this square on a piece of paper can hold our thoughts for some serious duration. Working on a simple logic on non-repetitive numbers, Sudoku isn’t a child’s play. But can something which is popular as a toy for children, solve a Sudoku? How about a Lego? Nope. Definitely, a Lego cannot solve a Sudoku at all. Interestingly, what we have discovered in one of our blog explorations is a Lego Mindstorm smoothly solving a Lego problem. Equipped with a light sensor, this robot is as small as an A4 sheet of paper, and works smoothly in a non-erroneous way.

Hans Andersson, the brain behind this innovation, has programmed this robot to perform a 5 step sequence which is:

a) Scanning b) Thresholding c) Segmentation d) Thinning e) Feature extraction.

Aiding the above mechanisms are the popular Backtracking Algorithm and computer graphic aid of Otsu’s Method. What catches the eye in the process of solving Sudoku is that: even though the robot uses these modern methods, it still uses a pencil and writes down the numbers. Yes, no printing at all.

Sudoku can be a very complex game and takes an ample amount of time to get solved. It is this time consuming problem which is probably the only problem with this smart bot. Nevertheless, it is still quite lucrative to make a tech enthusiast start a DIY right away on this bot.