Research on the Type Synthesis of a Regular Hexagonal Prism Rubik’s Cube Mechanism

Abstract

The Rubik’s Cube mechanism (RCM) is a kind of reconfigurable mechanism with multiple characteristics such as multiple configurations, variable topology, strong coupling, and reconfigurability. Crossover research on the RCM with mathematics, chemistry, cryptography, and other disciplines has led to important breakthroughs and progress. It is obvious that the invention and creation of a new RCM can provide important ideological inspiration and theoretical guidance for the accelerated iterative updating of Rubik’s Cube products and the expansion of their applications. This paper investigates the type synthesis method for a regular hexagonal prism (RHP) RCM (RHPRCM). Through analysis of the reconfigurable movement process of the RCM, two mechanism factors are abstracted, a type synthesis process for the RHPRCM is proposed, a symmetry layout method for the RCM’s revolute axis based on the RHP space polyhedron is proposed, and an analysis method for the intersection of the revolute pair contact surfaces (RPCSs) based on the adjacency matrix is proposed. Taking a revolute axis passing through the center of an RHP and having only one RPCS for each revolute axis as an example, an RHPRCM with different topological structures is synthesized. The relevant research in this paper can provide methodological guidance for the synthesis of other spatial RCMs.