Find the sentences where Passive forms and Participles are used. Underline them and translate into Russian. Use the grammar reference for Participles at the end of the book.
ARE ROBOTS READY TO TAKE OVER THE HOUSEHOLD CHORES?
Despite the rapid adoption of domestic
droids, they still hold more entertainment
value than functional use for their owners.
MARCH 17, 2017by Hugo Cox
Entertaining, engaging and sometimes even useful, robots are popping up in homes around the world rapidly. If you don’t already own one, your neighbor may well do; in a kitchen near you one may even now be beavering away vacuuming, folding clothes, cleaning windows, mowing lawns or unblocking drains. About 3.7m of these electronic “creatures” were sold to households around the world in 2015, according to the International Federation of Robotics. It predicts that annual sales will reach 31m, worth $13bn, by 2019.
From this range of home-help droids, I select Dyson’s 360 Eye home vacuum cleaner for a trial, much to the disgust of my regular cleaner, Lisa.
Lisa has the first laugh: following the robot’s first night of unsupervised industry, I get up to find it trapped, immobilized beneath a clothes drying stand it has toppled. It is heartbreakingly slow, having to navigate the room by trial and error before it establishes its mental map. Yet it is also competent and a little mesmerizing, meticulously exploring the kitchen, carefully picking its way round walls, bins and table legs, vacuuming all the while.
I can see how owners get attached to their autonomous helpers. Manufacturers’ technical teams often discover that robots that are returned for repair have been given names by their owners, says Ben Russell, curator of the robot exhibition currently at London’s Science Museum. “Owners often asked technical teams to repair rather than replace their ‘bots’ if they could,” says Russell, who interviewed manufacturers as part of his research.
Despite the anthropomorphic impulses they elicit, what unites all domestic droids is their singular lack of intelligence. Ask RoboThespian about the weather or even hand it a tray of drinks to give out and it is stumped. At the last Darpa Robotics Challenge in 2015, where rival robotics teams competed for a $2m first prize dished out by the US defense department, entries elicited as much mirth as awe.
The winner, a South Korean robot called DRC-Hubo, took nearly 45 minutes to complete a series of eight tasks including crossing a debris-strewn room, turning off a tap and opening a door. Much of the press coverage was dominated by reports of how, when and where the machines fell over, and how long it took them to right themselves — if they did at all. One fell so hard its head came off.
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“Talk of humanoid robots for utility tasks is pure science fiction,” says Will Jackson of Engineered Arts, the company that builds RoboThespian. “If you want to wash the dishes, buy a dishwasher.”
Consumers are more taken with entertainment robots. Many are useless, offering entertainment and bonding in the tradition of the Tamagotchi, the handheld digital pet popular in Japan in the 1990s. But an increasing number will sync with your mobile phone and the growing universe of connected devices. Sales of entertainment robots grew 29 per cent in 2015 (to 1.7m units) compared with 11 per cent among household bots, according to the International Federation of Robotics.
Most of them incorporate artificial intelligence to learn as they play. Having installed the 28kg, near life-size “Pepper” in more than 140 of its mobile phone stores to greet and entertain customers, Japanese group SoftBank has been selling them to the public.
The manufacturers claim Pepper can understand and react to human emotions. After a day with the robot, the Financial Times’ Robert Shrimsley was more circumspect. “Pepper does not so much converse as fire out questions that then lead it in specific directions.”
Tapia, another digital assistant droid, will wake you with news that it’s raining outside, remind you how little you slept and berate you for going to bed late. To make up for it, it will also take your coffee order, triggering the WiFi-connected coffee maker in your kitchen. It will even — if the advert is to be believed — scan the call history on your mobile phone and guilt trip you into calling your neglected mother.
Waking to a lecture from an oversized egg timer could become a little dull. To ensure that their creations elicit affection rather than irritation, many robot designers have made them more animalian than humanoid. One example is MiRo — a wheel-based cross between a rabbit and a dog.
Human speech is out of fashion for biometric (life-mimicking) robots, Conran tells me; users consider it freaky or irritating. So MiRo emits a relatively soothing selection of inquisitive beeps and tones.
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The Dyson vacuum cleaner mapped the room by stopping and turning just before it was about to bump into something; MiRo explores by rotating its camera-enabled eyes, cocking its head — its nose contains a sonar ranger — and wheeling around in a less systematic, more canine way. It is gently lifelike and rather endearing.
Conran has high hopes for his creation. It will, he explains, be the animating presence in the “carefree home” of the future.
What a carefree home will mean for carers is a moot point. A 2015 report by Bank of America Merrill Lynch reckoned that, if between a quarter and a half of people in the developed world adopted service robots for household tasks, the man-hours saved would be worth between $200bn and $500bn. Put another way, that is a lot of cleaners and carers out of work.
These worries are not new, notes Russell. “Society has been fretting about the advent of automation since Henry John Ford introduced an assembly line for his Model T.” And Darpa suggests that the prospect of humanoids replacing humans is distant at best. She may still be scowling at me about the robot vacuum cleaner, but Lisa has little cause for concern.
Exercise 25. Using the video in ex. 24 (A) and the article (B) compile information about household robots. Present the “The Web Quest project” to your group. Keep in mind professional business phrases for presentation (turn to Reference).
Test 2
Model:
| The first robot | to invent | by | truly imaginative engineers. |
The first robot was invented by truly imaginative engineers.
| 1. The first assembly line | to introduce |
by | Henry Ford. |
| 2. Humans | might; to replace | humanoids. | |
| 3. Automation | to fret | for some decades already. | |
| 4. The robots | to adopt | the engineers for various household tasks. | |
| 5. The room | to explore | MiRo’s camera-enabled eyes in a couple of minutes. | |
| 6. Relatively soothing beeps and tones | can; to chose | the user. | |
| 7. The kids find it freaky | to wake up | an oversized egg timer. | |
| 8. The call history on my mobile phone | to scan | my robot when I suddenly realized I had made that call from my mum’s telephone. | |
| 9. MyWiFi-connected coffee maker | to trigger | Robit by the time I got out of bed. | |
| 10. The happy users | to remind | by special apps about their calories intake. | |
| 11. Human emotions | may; to understand | the household robots only partly. | |
| 12. The visitors of the exhibition | to mesmerize | the range of home-help droids. |
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1. The cooker ___________________weird beeps was to be switched off immediately.
a) to produce b) producing c) produced
2. The technology__________________ annoying household routines has been taken a step further.
a) simplify b) simple c)simplifying
3. This is a designation for jobs that are usually _______________ to robots.
a) entrusting b) entrusted c) entrust
4. Users can _____________ the device using a remote.
a) own b) size up c) operate
5. Robotic pets may one day become as ________________ as microwave ovens and dishwashers.
a) mainstream b) simultaneous c) tedious
6.Remote users can manipulate the camera and ______________ the robot through their computers.
a) equip b) infiltrate c) steer
7. Robotic vacuum cleaners _____________ an ultrasound system to navigate around objects as they clean.
a) sift through b) interact with c) rely on
8. It is important to charge the lawn mower regularly so it doesn’t ____________out of energy.
a) run b) recognize c) track
9. Electric kettles will have sensors _______________your presence in the kitchen and start making tea.
a) to integrate b) to detect c) to assume
10. The wall sensors let the cleaner follow walls and go round objects closely but without ___________ them.
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a) hitting b) to hit c) to be hit by
11. An advanced system of sensors and a powerful central processor let the robot maneuver around _____________.
a) invasion b) circuits c) obstacles
12. The _______________ sensors determine the size of the room.
a) receiver b) dimension c) security
1. Большинство роботов бесполезны и предназначены для развлечения. 2. Производители заявляют, что роботы могут понимать людей и реагировать на слова, а благодаря системе искусственного интеллекта еще и постоянно обучаются. 3. Это устройство оборудовано камерой и громкой связью. 4. Бампер вдавливается, когда пылесос натыкается на препятствие. 5. Робот-питомец может объезжать мебель и другие препятствия, используя ультразвуковые сигналы и датчики направления. 6. В развитых странах роботов применяют для выполнения работы по дому. 7. Более сложные задачи, как присмотр за детьми, например, роботам поручать пока рано. 8. Новое устройство просеивает песок и собирает мокрые комки одновременно. 9. Акустические сенсоры реагируют на частички грязи, ударяющиеся об них. 10. Владельцы частных домов с удовольствием поручают задачу прочистки водосточных труб роботам. 11. Робот-пылесос передвигается по комнате зигзагообразно. 12. Если время, затраченное на отражение инфракрасного сигнала, внезапно увеличивается, то сенсор обнаруживает ступеньку. 13. Сигналы от сенсоров передаются в центральный процессор. 14. Домашние дела могут быть скучными и неприятными – лучше перепоручить их роботам. 15. Моя газонокосилка работает на батарейках, а не бензине. 16. Установите на машину противоугонную систему. 17. Такие устройства уже стали привычными (обычными). 18. Некоторая бытовая техника может быть запрограммирована: например, чтобы начать стирку или приготовление еды в определенное время. 19. Роботы, оснащенные сенсорами, могут менять направление движения сами или же ими можно управлять с помощью пульта дистанционного управления. 20. Роботы и программируемая бытовая техника упрощают нашу жизнь и освобождают время.
Model: Domestic 1._______ (robot) 2. _______ (clean) contain a lot of sensors.
1. Robotic
2. Cleaners
3. …
4. …
It now seems like a good time 1. _____________ (discussion) one particular fuzzy line: the 2.______________(different) between robots and androids. Both words are usually used 3._______________ (interchangeable), which is why R2-D2in Star Wars is called a droid, a derivative of android. While on the surface this might seem correct, there is a 4.___________ (majority) difference between robots and androids.
A robot can, but does not 5._______________(necessary) have to be in the form of a human, but an android is always in the form of a human. There is, however, an issue with the 6.______________(to define) of an android: Just what does "in the form of a human" mean?
It can be argued that an android should be 7. __________ (ability) to pass as a human in natural light. So, if you 8. _______________ (subscription) to this belief, C-3PO from Star Wars and R. Giskard Reventlov from Isaac Asimov's The Robots of Dawn are robots, not androids. The reason for this 9.__________________(to conclude) is that by no stretch of the 10._________________(imagine) can either pass as human. On the other hand, Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation can pass as human, although a human with an odd complexion, so it falls in the android 11. ______________ (to classify).
My personal definitions are by no means hard and fast; consider, for example, Isaac Asimov's character Andrew from the novella The Bicentennial Man and film of the same name. In the story, Andrew began his 12._____________(to exist) as a robot and through a series of upgrades and 13.____________________(to modify) becomes more and more human-like, transitioning to android and possibly even human. While Andrew's journey is fascinating and uplifting, it brings up another question yet to explore: What is the difference between an android and a human?
Module 3
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