[thechut]

I would assume in these cases it is not the same starting position. A competition like that could be done, but the reality is that it doesn't matter. The way this robot and the fastest human speedcubers solve the cube is most likely very similar and either based on the ZB[1] or original Fridrich method (sometimes refereed to as F2L)[2] method of solving which requires the use of 100s of different algorithms. Because of this, solutions will usually take a similar amount of time and require a similar number of moves to solve the cube.

[1] http://www.zborowski.republika.pl/expert3x3x3method.html [2] http://www.speedsolving.com/wiki/index.php/Fridrich