Sony has developed small but remarkable robots that can dance and sing for entertainment purposes.
Like never before, technology can bring imagination to life. The question is what will we conceive? For decades, popular culture has been enthralled with the possibility of robots that act and look like humans. We are promised by film, fiction and television that humanoids will cook for us, clean for us, become our best friends, teach our children, and even fall in love with us. So where are they? The forerunners are here already. Recently, the media has covered a surprising number of new humanoid robots emerging on the commercial market. Like many new technologies, these early generations of commercially available humanoids are costly curiosities, useful for entertainment, but little else. Yet, in time, they will accomplish a wide variety of tasks in homes, battlefields, nuclear plants, government installations, factory floors, and even space stations.
Humanoids will exhibit emotion, forge relationships, make decisions, and develop as they learn through interaction with the environment Robots that can incrementally acquire new knowledge from autonomous interactions with the environment will accomplish tasks by means their designers did not explicitly implement, and will adapt to unanticipated circumstances of unstructured environments. Already, humanoid robots can autonomously perform task decomposition necessary to carry out high-level, complex commands given through gesture and speech. Humanoids can adapt and orchestrate existing capabilities as well as create new behaviors using a variety of machine learning techniques. In fact, some researchers claim to have implemented a first stab at the "seed" which will allow robot intelligence to develop indefinitely. As they adapt to their own unique experiences with the world, we will look out upon a population where no two humanoids are exactly alike.
Humanoids may prove to be the ideal robot design to interact with people. After all, humans tend to naturally interact with other human-like entities; the interface is hardwired in our brains. Their bodies will allow them to seamlessly blend into environments already designed for humans. The humans have adapted to the highly constrained modality of monitor and keyboard. In future technology will adapt to us. Undoubtedly, humanoids will change the way we interact with machines and will impact how we interact with and understand each other. Humanoid Robotics also offers a unique research tool for understanding the human brain and body. Already, humanoids have provided revolutionary new ways for studying cognitive science. Using humanoids researchers can embody their theories and take them to task at a variety of levels.(2357 знаків)
1 Say which statements are true or false. If they are false correct them.
1 Early generations of commercially available humanoids are costly curiosities, useful for entertainment, but little else.
2 In future humanoids will not be able to do a wide variety of tasks in homes, battlefields, nuclear plants and other fields.
3 Humanoids may prove to be the ideal robot design to interact with people.
4 In future technology will adapt to us.
5 Using humanoids researchers can forget their theories.
2 Answer the following questions:
1 What company has developed small robots that can dance and sing for entertainment purposes?
2 Can technology bring imagination to life?
3 What characteristics will humanoids have in time?
4 Would you like to have a humanoid at home? Why? What tasks must it accomplish?
5 What are advantages and disadvantages of this invention?