2007年VOA标准英语-Young Engineers Design Robots To Score Goals, S

By Philip Graitcer
Atlanta, Georgia
14 August 2007
 

A robot playing a modified game of football

Many people think of robots that think and act like human as the stuff of the future or characters in science fiction movies. But a recent competition at an American university demonstrated that intelligent robots are already here. Philip Graitcer reports.

In a gymnasium on the campus of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, more than 1,700 high school and university students and their faculty¹ advisers² readied their teams for a week of football -- or soccer, as Americans know it.

The athletes did not seem to mind the occasional touch of a soldering³ iron or twist of the screwdriver⁴.

That is because the players are robots, and they have come here with their human creators for RoboCup 2007, the World Cup of robotic soccer.

Robocup, robot players play soccer

The robots in this competition are autonomous⁵ -- they move, see and kick by themselves. There are no wires, remote controls or even radio signals controlling them. Some look like machines, others look almost human.

But these kid-size humanoids are still in the early stage of development -- movements awkward and crude.

It is hard to imagine that RoboCup's goal is to create a team of robots that can defeat the World Cup human champions by the year 2050.

But Tucker Balch, one of RoboCup's organizers, fully⁶ expects to do it. "We're already playing soccer with teams of robots with legs, that look like little people. And it's just another of many incremental⁷ steps until we reach that goal. They're all steps that we can predict and know. There's nothing magic has to happen. We just have to make steady improvement."

Balch expects to see robots helping⁸ people in their homes one day. They are already on the job at disaster sites.

In the Rescue Robot event, robots operated in a simulated collapsed⁹ building. The machines have to maneuver¹⁰ around obstacles and up stairs to find the dolls that represent human victims.

A Robocup creator

But because soccer is perhaps the most popular sport in the world, robotic soccer draws the most competitors.

Teams from Japan, Germany and the United States have dominated RoboCup since the competition began 10 years ago, but now other countries are winning matches. Organizer Tucker Balch says that is because each country has different approaches to designing and building their robots. "What I find especially interesting is a country like Iran, where they have fantastic engineers but they don't have all of the latest computing¹¹ technology, cameras and so on. So that the technology the robots are built out of is maybe five years old, but their engineering and design is current, and they perform very, very well.

So well, in fact, that the Iranian junior soccer team -- Team Espadana -- is the defending world champion. Its robots are intensively engineered and they seem smarter than the others on the field.

Team member Amir Kherabadi says they had to beat other groups to represent their country here.

"In our league, there are about 18 teams in Iran and every year they challenge each other and then the best team comes to the RoboCup."

Teammate Najam Naderi programs the robots. He says the Iranians put in a lot of time and effort. "These [past] two or three years, we work all days and nights, eight or 10 hours a day."

All that work paid off. The Iranians robots did well at Robocup 2007. They beat soccer teams from Italy, Japan, Poland, Hungary and the United States. When the points were added up for the finals, Team Espadana wound up sharing the championship trophy¹² with the Japanese and Italian teams.

RoboCup 2008 will be held in Shanghai, just before the Summer Olympics in Beijing.

1 faculty   

n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员

参考例句：

• He has a great faculty for learning foreign languages.他有学习外语的天赋。
• He has the faculty of saying the right thing at the right time.他有在恰当的时候说恰当的话的才智。

2 advisers   

顾问，劝告者( adviser的名词复数 )； （指导大学新生学科问题等的）指导教授

参考例句：

• a member of the President's favoured circle of advisers 总统宠爱的顾问班子中的一员
• She withdrew to confer with her advisers before announcing a decision. 她先去请教顾问然后再宣布决定。

3 soldering   

n.软焊；锡焊；低温焊接；热焊接v.（使）焊接，焊合( solder的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Care must be exercised in attaching the lead wires to the soldering tabs. 在往接线片上焊导线时必须非常小心。 来自辞典例句
• I suggest posing me with a soldering wand over my head like a sword. 我想让自己这样像把剑一样把电焊杆举过头顶。 来自电影对白

4 screwdriver   

n.螺丝起子；伏特加橙汁鸡尾酒

参考例句：

• He took a screwdriver and teased out the remaining screws.他拿出螺丝刀把其余的螺丝卸了下来。
• The electric drill can also be used as a screwdriver.这把电钻也可用作螺丝刀。

5 autonomous   

adj.自治的；独立的

参考例句：

• They proudly declared themselves part of a new autonomous province.他们自豪地宣布成为新自治省的一部分。
• This is a matter that comes within the jurisdiction of the autonomous region.这件事是属于自治区权限以内的事务。

6 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

7 incremental   

adj.增加的

参考例句：

• For logic devices, the incremental current gain is very important. 对于逻辑器件来说，提高电流增益是非常重要的。 来自辞典例句
• By using an incremental approach, the problems involving material or geometric nonlinearity have been solved. 借应用一种增量方法，已经解决了包括材料的或几何的非线性问题。 来自辞典例句

8 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

9 collapsed   

adj.倒塌的

参考例句：

• Jack collapsed in agony on the floor. 杰克十分痛苦地瘫倒在地板上。
• The roof collapsed under the weight of snow. 房顶在雪的重压下突然坍塌下来。

10 maneuver   

n.策略[pl.]演习；v.(巧妙)控制；用策略

参考例句：

• All the fighters landed safely on the airport after the military maneuver.在军事演习后，所有战斗机都安全降落在机场上。
• I did get her attention with this maneuver.我用这个策略确实引起了她的注意。

11 computing   

n.计算

参考例句：

• to work in computing 从事信息处理
• Back in the dark ages of computing, in about 1980, they started a software company. 早在计算机尚未普及的时代（约1980年），他们就创办了软件公司。

12 trophy   

n.优胜旗，奖品，奖杯，战胜品，纪念品

参考例句：

• The cup is a cherished trophy of the company.那只奖杯是该公司很珍惜的奖品。
• He hung the lion's head as a trophy.他把那狮子头挂起来作为狩猎纪念品。