The Sony Dream Robot was ________.

第1题

Section BDirections: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by som

Section B

Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice.

The dancers stand motionless at their position and the room grows silent. But as the music starts, they began to move, bending, turning and waving their fans gracefully as they perform. a traditional Japanese dance. Yoshihiro Kuroki watches in silence, occasionally making notes. But as the dance ends, he beams with happiness. The performance has been flawless.

There have been many performances of traditional Japanese dances over the centuries, but this one is unique, because it is performed not by human dancers but by robots. And the performance takes place not in a dance studio but in a laboratory of Sony Corp.'s Entertainment Robot Co. in Shinagawa, Japan, where Kuroki is general manager. He is the mastermind behind a series of even more capable humanoid entertainment robots, starting with the Sony Dream Robot, or SDR, in 1997, up to the current QRIO in 2003.

These delightful machines are only 58 cm tall, about the size of a newborn infant, weigh about 7 kg, and move with 38 degrees of freedom, each with its own servomotor (辅助马达).

QRIO's predecessor, the SDR4X, announced in 2002, can walk, dance, sing, speak, recognize faces, and understand continuous speech. Each robot has two charge-coupled-device cameras to detect color and position and can locate a colored hall, move toward it, and kick it into a goal. It also has contact sensors in several joints to avoid pinching real human fingers. Seeing the robot perform, it is difficult to remember that there is no sentience (知觉) behind those glass eyes.

Which of the following is the most suitable title of this passage？

A．New Entertainment Robots Produced in Japan.

B．QRIO--the Robot Dancers.

C．Robots--Man's Best Friend.

D．An Extraordinary Performance in Sony's Lab.

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第2题

The idea of humanoid robots is not new.They have been part of the imaginative landscape ev

The idea of humanoid robots is not new. They have been part of the imaginative landscape ever since Karl Capek, a Czech writer, first dreamed them up for his 1921 play "Rossum's Universal Robots." (The word "robot" comes from the Czech word for drudgery, robota.) Since then, Hollywood has produced countless variations on the theme, from the sultry False Maria in Fritz Lang's silent masterpiece "Metropolis" to the withering C-3PO in "Star Wars" and the ruthless assassin of "Terminator." Humanoid robots have walked into our collective subconscious, coloring our views of the future.

But now Japan's industrial giants are spending billions of yen to make such robots a reality. Their new humanoids represent impressive feats of engineering: when Honda introduced Asimo, a four-foot robot that had been in development for some 15 years, it walked so fluidly that its white, articulated exterior seemed to conceal a human. Honda continues to make the machine faster, friendlier and more agile. Last October, when Asimo was inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame in Pittsburgh, it walked onto the stage and accepted its own plaque.

At two and a half feet tall, Sony's QRIO is smaller and more toy-like than Asimo. It walks, understands a small number of voice commands, and can navigate on its own. If it falls over, it gets up and resumes where it leaves off. It can even connect wirelessly to the internet and broadcast what its camera eyes can see. In 2003, Sony demonstrated an upgraded QRIO that could run. Honda responded last December with a version of Asimo that runs at twice the speed.

In 2004, Toyota joined the fray with its own family of robots, called Partner, one of which is a four-foot humanoid that plays the trumpet. Its fingers work the instrument's valves, and it has mechanical lungs and artificial lips. Toyota hopes to offer a commercial version of the robot by 2010. This month, 50 Partner robots will act as guides at Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan.

Despite their sudden proliferation, however, humanoids are still a mechanical minority. Most of the world's robots are faceless, footless and mute. They are bolted to the floors of factories, stamping out car parts or welding pieces of metal, making more machines. According to the United Nations, business orders for industrial robots jumped 18% in the first half of 2004. They may soon be outnumbered by domestic robots, such as self-navigating vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers and window washers, which are selling fast. But neither industrial nor domestic robots are humanoid.

In Paragraph 1 the author introduces his topic by relating ______.

A．the idea of humanoid robots

B．Karl Capek's creation of robots

C．Hollywood's production of robot films

D．the origin of and popular movies about robots

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第3题

The idea of humanoid robots is not new.They have been part of the imaginative landscape ev

The idea of humanoid robots is not new. They have been part of the imaginative landscape ever since Karl Capek, a Czech writer, first dreamed them up for his 1921 play "Rossum's Universal Robots." (The word "robot" comes from the Czech word for drudgery, robota.) Since then, Hollywood has produced countless variations on the theme, from the sultry False Maria in Fritz Lang's silent masterpiece "Metropolis" to the withering C-3PO in "Star Wars" and the ruthless assassin of "Terminator." Humanoid robots have walked into our collective subconscious, coloring our views of the future.

But now Japan's industrial giants are spending billions of yen to make such robots a reality. Their new humanoids represent impressive feats of engineering: when Honda introduced Asimo, a four-foot robot that had been in development for some 15 years, it walked so fluidly that its white, articulated exterior seemed to conceal a human. Honda continues to make the machine faster, friendlier and more agile. Last October, when Asimo was inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame in Pittsburgh, it walked onto the stage and accepted its own plaque.

At two and a half feet tall, Sony's QRIO is smaller and more toy-like than Asimo. It walks, understands a small number of voice commands, and can navigate on its own. If it falls over, it gets up and resumes where it leaves off. It can even connect wirelessly to the internet and broadcast what its camera eyes can see. In 2003, Sony demonstrated an upgraded QRIO that could run. Honda responded last December with a version of Asimo that runs at twice the speed.

In 2004, Toyota joined the fray with its own family of robots, called Partner, one of which is a four-foot humanoid that plays the trumpet. Its fingers work the instrument's valves, and it has mechanical lungs and artificial lips. Toyota hopes to offer a commercial version of the robot by 2010. This month, 50 Partner robots will act as guides at Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan.

Despite their sudden proliferation, however, humanoids are still a mechanical minority. Most of the world's robots are faceless, footless and mute. They are bolted to the floors of factories, stamping out car parts or welding pieces of metal, making more machines. According to the United Nations, business orders for industrial robots jumped 18% in the first half of 2004. They may soon be outnumbered by domestic robots, such as self-navigating vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers and window washers, which are selling fast. But neither industrial nor domestic robots are humanoid.

In Paragraph 1 the author introduces his topic by relating ______.

A．the idea of humanoid robots

B．Karl Capek's creation of robots

C．Hollywood's production of robot films

D．the origin of and popular movies about robots

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第4题

Section BDirections: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by som

Section B

Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice.

The idea of humanoid robots is not new, of course. They have been part of the imaginative landscape ever since Karl Capek, a Czech writer, first dreamed them up for his 1921 play "Rossum's Universal Robots".(The word "robot" comes from the Czech word for drudgery, robota.) Since then, Hollywood has produced countless variations on the theme, from the sultry False Maria in Fritz Lang's silent masterpiece Metropolis to the wittering C-3PO in Star Wars and the ruthless assassin

of Terminator. Humanoid robots have walked into our collective subconscious, colouring our views of the future.

But now Japan's industrial giants are spending billions of yen to make such robots a reality. Their new humanoids represent impressive feats of engineering: when Honda introduced Asimo, a four-foot robot that had been in development for some 15 years, it walked so fluidly that its white, articulated exterior seemed to conceal a human. Honda continues to make the machine faster, friendlier and more agile. Last October, when Asimo was inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame in Pittsburgh, it walked on to the stage and accepted its own plaque.

At two and a half feet tall, Sony's QRIO is smaller and more toy-like than Asimo. It walks, understands a small number of voice commands, and can navigate on its own. If it falls over, it gets up and resumes where it left off. It can even connect wirelessly to the internet and broadcast what its camera eyes can see. In 2003, Sony demonstrated an upgraded QRIO that could run. Honda responded last December with a version of Asimo that runs at twice the speed.

In 2004, Toyota joined the fray with its own family of robots, called Partner, one of which is a four-foot humanoid that plays the trumpet. Its fingers work the instrument's valves, and it has mechanical lungs and artificial lips. Toyota hopes to offer a commercial version of the robot by 2010. This month, 50 Partner robots will act as guides at Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan.

Despite their sudden proliferation, however, humanoids are still a mechanical minority. Most of the world's robots are faceless, footless and mute. They are bolted to the floors of factories, stamping out car parts or welding pieces of metal, machines making more machines. According to the United Nations, business orders for industrial robots jumped 18% in the first half of 2004. They may soon be outnumbered by domestic robots, such as self-navigating vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers and window washers, which are selling fast. But neither industrial nor domestic robots are humanoid.

In paragraph 1 the author introduces his topic by relating______.

A．the idea of humanoid robots

B．Karl Capek's creation of robots

C．Hollywood's production of robot films

D．the origin of and popular films about robots

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第5题

Part ADirections: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by c

Part A

Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. (40 points)

The idea of humanoid robots is not new, of course. They have been part of the imaginative landscape ever since Karl Capek, a Czech writer, first dreamed them up for his 1921 play "Rossum's Universal Robots". (The word "robot" comes from the Czech word for drudgery, robota.) Since then, Hollywood has produced countless variations on the theme, from the sultry False Maria in Fritz Lang's silent masterpiece "Metropolis" to the wittering C-3PO in "Star Wars" and the ruthless assassin of "Terminator". Humanoid robots have walked into our collective subconscious, colouring our views of the future.

But now Japan's industrial giants are spending billions of yen to make such robots a reality. Their new humanoids represent impressive feats of engineering: when Honda introduced Asimo, a four-foot robot that had been in development for some 15 years, it walked so fluidly that its white, articulated exterior seemed to conceal a human. Honda continues to make the machine faster, friendlier and more agile. Last October, when Asimo was inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame in Pittsburgh, it walked on to the stage and accepted its own plaque.

At two and a half feet tall, Sony's QRIO is smaller and more toy-like than Asimo. It walks, understands a small number of voice commands, and can navigate on its own. If it falls over, it gets up and resumes where it left off. It can even connect wirelessly to the Internet and broadcast what its camera eyes can see. In 2003, Sony demonstrated an upgraded QRIO that could run. Honda responded last December with a version of Asimo that runs at twice the speed.

In 2004, Toyota joined the fray with its own family of robots, called Partner, one of which is a four-foot humanoid that plays the trumpet. Its fingers work the instrument's valves, and it has mechanical lungs and artificial lips. Toyota hopes to offer a commercial version of the robot by 2010. This month, 50 Partner robots will act as guides at Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan.

Despite their sudden proliferation, however, humanoids are still a mechanical minority. Most of the world's robots are faceless, footless and mute. They are bolted to the floors of factories, stamping out car parts or welding pieces of metal, machines making more machines. According to the United Nations, business orders for industrial robots jumped 18% in the first half of 2004. They may soon be outnumbered by domestic robots, such as self-navigating vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers and window washers, which are selling fast. But neither industrial nor domestic robots are humanoid.

In Paragraph I the author introduces his topic by relating______.

A．the idea of humanoid robots

B．Karl Capek's creation of robots

C．Hollywood's production of robot films

D．the origin of and popular films about robots

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第6题

Part ADirections: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by c

Part A

Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D . Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.

The idea of humanoid robots is not new, of course. They have been part of the imaginative landscape ever since Karl Capek, a Czech writer, first dreamed them up for his 1921 play "Rossum's Universal Robots". (The word "robot" comes from the Czech word for drudgery, robota. )Since then, Hollywood has produced countless variations on the theme, from the sultry False Maria in Fritz Lang's silent masterpiece "Metropolis" to the wittering C-3PO in "Star Wars" and the ruthless assassin of "Terminator". Humanoid robots have walked into our collective subconscious, colouring our views of the future.

But now Japan's industrial giants are spending billions of yen to make such robots a reality. Their new humanoids represent impressive feats of engineering: when Honda introduced Asimo, a four-foot robot that had been in development for some 15 years, it walked so fluidly that its white, articulated exterior seemed to conceal a human. Honda continues to make the machine faster, friendlier and more agile. Last October, when Asimo was inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame in Pittsburgh, it walked on to the stage and accepted its own plaque. At two and a half feet tall, Sony's QRIO is smaller and more toy-like than Asimo. It walks, understands a small number of voice commands, and can navigate on its own. If it falls over, it gets up and resumes where it left off. It can even connect wirelessly to the internet and broadcast what its camera eyes can see. In 2003, Sony demonstrated an upgraded QRIO that could run. Honda responded last December with a version of Asimo that runs at twice the speed.

In 2004, Toyota joined the fray with its own family of robots, called Partner, one of which is a four-foot humanoid that plays the trumpet. Its fingers work the instrument's valves, and it has mechanical lungs and artificial lips. Toyota hopes to offer a commercial version of the robot by 2010. This month, 50 Partner robots will act as guides at Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan.

Despite their sudden proliferation, however, humanoids are still a mechanical minority. Most of the world's robots are faceless, footless and mute. They are bolted to the floors of factories, stamping out car parts or welding pieces of metal, machines making more machines. According to the United Nations, business orders for industrial robots jumped 18% in the first half of 2004. They may soon be outnumbered by domestic robots, such as self-navigating vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers and window washers, which are selling fast. But neither industrial nor domestic robots are humanoid.

In paragraph 1 the author introduces his topic by relating ______.

A．the idea of humanoid robots

B．Karl Capek's creation of robots

C．Hollywood's production of robot films

D．the or gin of and popular films about robots

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第7题

More than 200 organizations are preparing to bring their teams of robots to RoboCup 2003 n

ext month in Padua, Italy, an event where researchers test out the latest artificial intelligence techniques in games of football or rescue simulations.

Event organizers said last week that 183 teams from around the world, mostly from universities, have registered for rescue simulation competitions and various leagues of foot ball, while another 80 groups are to show off robots aimed at children. The event is expecting more than 50,000 visitors. While RoboCup has its lighter side, it is one of the most prominent events in the world for both artificial-intelligence researchers and for companies such as Honda and Sony wishing to show off their latest robotics technology.

In recent years, advances in robotics and computer technology have led to renewed interest in robots. Several companies have produced humanoid robots capable of walking on two legs, even up stairs or across uneven surfaces, while Sony has virtually single-handedly created a consumer-robot market with its Aibo dog, released in 1999.

Robot technologies such as vision and mobility systems have also made their way into the broader world of IT. Hewlett-Packard is even testing robots that could attend meetings in place of a human, in order to cut down on business travel.

Ahead of RoboCup, another European university has signed up to integrate its Aibo robots into their research curriculum. RoboCup's "four-legged league" uses Aibo robots, while the "humanoid league" pits two-legged robots such as Honda's AMmo against one another. The event says its ultimate goal is to develop a team of fully autonomous robots by the year 2050 that can win against .the human world soccer champion team.

According to the text, the purpose of RohoCup is______.

A．create a world ruled by robots

B．eliminate the need for human athletes

C．test out artificial intelligence technology

D．for scientists to get together and have a good time

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第8题

Although the dream of the home robot has not died, robots have had their greatest impact i

n factories. Unimate, the first industrial robot, went to work for General Motors in 1961. Even at a time when computing power was costly, robots made excellent workers and proved that machines controlled by computers could perform. some tasks better than humans. In addition, robots can work around the clock and never go on strike.

There are now about 800 000 industrial robots around the world, and orders for new robots in the first half of 2007 were up a record 26% from the same period in 2006, according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). Demand is increasing as prices fall: a robot sold in 2007 cost less than a fifth of an equivalent robot sold in 1990, for example. Today, in car factories in Japan, Germany and Italy, there is more than one robot for every ten production workers.

Similarly, agricultural robots harvest billions of tones of crops every year. There are six-legged timber cutters, tree-climbing fruit-pickers, robots that milk cows, and others that wash windows, trucks and aircraft. Industrial robotics is a 5.6 billon industry, growing by around 7% a year. But the UNECE report predicts that the highest growth over the next three years will be in domestic rather than industrial robots. Sales of such devices, it predicts will grow ten-fold between 2007 and 2010, overtaking the market for industrial robots.

The broader application of robotics is becoming possible thanks to the tumbling (暴跌) cost of computing power, says Takeo Kanade. This lets programmers write more sophisticated software that delivers more intelligent robotic behavior. At the same time, he notes, the cost of camera and sensor chips has tumbled, too. "The processing power is so much better than before that some of the seemingly simple things we humans do, like recognizing faces, can begin to be done", says Dr. Kanade.

While prices drop and hardware improves, research into robotic vision, control systems and communications have jumped ahead as well. America's military and its space agency, NASA, have poured billions into robotic research and related fields such as computer vision. The Spirit and Opportunity Rovers (漫游者) exploring Mars can pick their way across the surface to reach a specific destination. Their human masters do not specify the route; instead, the robots are programmed to identify and avoid obstacles themselves.

It can be inferred from the first paragraph that______.

A．the first robot of the world was designed in 1961 for General Motors

B．the expensive computing power didn't hinder a robot's efficiency

C．robots controlled by computers can do most tasks better than humans

D．human workers often went on a strike when they were not satisfied in the past

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第9题

翻译练习（二） Instant Expert: Robots Ever since the...

翻译练习（二） Instant Expert: Robots Ever since the Czech writer Karel Capek first coined the term “robot” in 1921, there has been an expectation that robots would someday deliver us from the drudgery of hard work. The word — from the Czech “robota”, for hard labour and servitude—described intelligent machines used as slaves in his play R. U. R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). Today, over one million household robots, and a further 1.1 million industrial robots are operating worldwide. Robots are used to perform tasks that require great levels of precision or are simply repetitive and boring. Many also do jobs that are hazardous to people, such as exploring shipwrecks, helping out after disasters, studying other planets and defusing bombs or mines. Robots are increasingly marching into our lives. In the future, robots will act as our carers, medics, bionic enhancements, companions, entertainers, security guards, traffic police and even soldiers. A recent report published by the United Nations revealed that sales of domestic robots had tripled in a single year. What’s more, they were well on their way to outstripping their industrial cousins. While a large portion of the household robots were made up of robotic vacuum cleaners, mops, lawn mowers, pool cleaners, security bots and even robotic baby-rockers, the real boom was in entertainment robots. Suddenly people were happy to pay for robots that had no specific functional value. Instead these bots, such as Sony’s Aibo robotic dog and its robo-pups served as robo-pets and companions, rather than slaves.

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第10题

"One time, I couldn't find Paro and was looking for 'him' everywhere," says one caretaker

at the Kirara nursing home in Japan's Nanto City. "Finally I found Paro sleeping in a patient's bed."

Paro is a robotic baby seal—covered with white fur—that was developed over 12 years at a cost of some $10 million by Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology. Nanto is one of the first cities in the world to experiment using robots to help care for the elder citizens.

According to the nursing staff, Paro, which responds to human voices and loving touches, has become part of the family. In fact, nurses often find elderly patients covering the robot in blankets and trying to feed it snacks, even though Paro can't really eat.

It's no surprise that Japan is turning to technology for help with one of its most troublesome problems: an aging population. Japan is said to be with 28% of the population expected to be 65 years or older by 2010.@Fewer young people would like to be caretakers. Perhaps robotic companions can ease some of the burden.

But whether robots can adequately handle this responsibility—positively impacting both the health and well-being of the elderly—remains an open question.

Alan Beck directs one such study. He said they placed Aibo, a robotic dog made by Sony, in the homes of isolated senior citizens to determine whether the robotic pet can improve quality of life. Though the final results have not yet been published, preliminary(初步的) conclusions indicate that the robotic dog is treated much like a family pet, drawing behaviors commonly associated with companionship, including sharing thoughts and feelings. Beck says participants felt more comfortable and less lonely with Aibo.

Dr. Takanori Shibata, the creator of Paro, and his colleagues found that robot interaction lowered stress, elevated moods and decreased depression. Additionally, Paro encouraged communication and social behavior. among subjects. What's more, Shibata found that brain activity increased 50% in patients with dementia(痴呆)after just twenty minutes with Paro. Caretakers were positively affected as well. The robots not only decreased nurses'stress levels but also gave them something to discuss with their elderly patients.

What are Paro and Aibo according to the author's introduction？

A．They are family pets.

B．They are robotic caretakers.

C．They are robotic animal companions.

D．They are toys for senior citizens.

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The Sony Dream Robot was ________.A．the first human-like entertainment robot developed by