ROBOTS

We think of robots as modern inventions, but people have imagined and created versions of these machines for centuries. There were clocks with moving figures in Ancient Greece. In the late 1400s, Leonardo da Vinci drew plans for a mechanical humanoid robot, but we don’t know if he ever built one. Complicated mechanical figures were built in the 1700s, and in 1818 a humanoid robotic figure appeared in the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

The word “robot” comes from the Czech word for “hard work”. But it wouldn’t have become popular if Czech writer Karel Capek hadn’t written a play called Rossum’s Universal Robots. First produced in the 1920s, the play was about artificial people, or robots, that rebel against humans. It was so successful that the word “robot” has been used everywhere since then.

The invention of the microchip in the 1950s helped the robotics industry continue to develop. By the early 1960s, there were special robots for factory work, space exploration and medical interventions. These were not humanoid robots – they were mechanical arms controlled by a computer.

Later, scientists created Shakey, a very special robot. Shakey was the first moving robot that could interpret and store information from its environment. That was the beginning of artificial intelligence, or making a computer “think” like a person.

Since Shakey’s creation over 40 years ago, robots have become much more advanced. There are now robotic arms that are precise enough to be used for delicate medical operations. There are robots that explore volcanoes and oceans, and robotic vacuum cleaners and pets. And in Japan, humanoid robots are being used in classrooms and offices. As soon as an invention succeeds, it usually becomes popular around the world.

If the Japanese experience continues to be positive, robots will probably soon become more common in other countries as well. If Leonardo da Vinci were here, he would be amazed by our progress! He would also be thrilled if he knew that someone finally built the robot that he had designed. In 2002, Mark Rosheim, a NASA engineer, built a robot based on Leonardo’s drawings – and it worked perfectly.

      

       1.    HOW DID THE FOLLOWING PEOPLE CONTRIBUTE TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ROBOT?(4x1=5 points)

       1.  The people of Ancient Greece .......................................................................................  .

       2.  Leonardo da Vinci ..........................................................................................................  .

       3.  Mary Shelley ..................................................................................................................  .

       4.  Karel Capek ....................................................................................................................  .

       5.  Mark Rosheim ..................................................................................................................

         2.  ANSWER THE QUESTIONS.  (3 x 3 = 9 points)

       1.  What does the word “robot” mean? 

                                                                                                                                                      

       2.  What happened in the 1950s that helped the robotics industry develop? 

                                                                                                                                                        

       3.  In what two ways did Shakey “think” like a person? 

                                                                                                                                                      

         3.  FIND ANTONYMS IN THE TEXT FOR THE WORDS BELOW.  (4 x 1.5  = 6 points)

       1.  destroyed (paragraph 1) ...........................

       2.  natural (paragraph 2)     ...........................

       3.  fails (paragraph 5)          ...........................

       4.  rare ((paragraph 6)         ...........................