Write the headings above the six texts about working robots
a) Painting.
b) Handling
c) Welding
d) Palletizing.
e) Finishing.
f) Cutting.
1 ____________ Car assembly plants have used robots for amny years as this process produces dangerous fumed and bright lights. Robot arms have to carry a weld gun that can weigh over 100kg. | 4 _____________ With a six-axis robot, you can finish parts in all kinds of materials. The robot either holds the part or the tool. You can also use a multipurpose tool at the end of the robot arm. |
2 __________ This was an early application of robots, a sthe process produces harmful, flammable fumes as the paint evaporates. The robots have quite thin arms as they don’t have do carry much weight. | 5 ______________ Robots have the power and speed for this kind of job. They can move car parts, eggs, chocolates, bottles of drinks and loads up to 120 kg. they can perform at rates of 150 picks per minute. |
3 ___________ Robots are good choice as the process can involve dangerous technologies. The robot holds either the part or the cutting tool. | 6 ___________ As an example, a robot pick up bags of cement and places them on a pallet. It counts the bags and knows where the next one must be placed. Simple four- or five-axis robots can be used for palletising foods or building materials. |
18. Read the text attentively to find something new about robots.
Robots in Perspective
If you think robots belong to space movies, think again. Right now, all over the world, robots are on the move. Putting chocolates into boxes, walking into live volcanoes, driving trains in Paris and defusing bombs in Northern Ireland are their common tasks. Today's robots are doing more and more things humans can't do or don't want to do. The idea of creating an intelligent machine is very old. Homer described gold girls, mechanical helpers built by Hephaistos, the Greek god of smiths. In1495, Leonardo da Vinci designed a mechanical man. But only the invention of transistors and integrated circuits in the 1950s and 1960s made real robots possible. Compact, reliable electronics and computers added brains to already existing machines. In 1959, researchers demonstrated the possibility of robotic manufacturing ashtrays.
The Czech word 'robota', meaning hard work, was first used by the writer Karel Chapek in the story where robots are invented to help people by performing simple tasks, but being used to fight wars, they turn on their human masters and take over the world.
There's no precise definitionof a robot. It is normally defined as a programmable machine imitatingan intelligent creature. Getting information from its surroundings and doing something physical (moving or manipulatingobjects) qualify a machine as a robot.
Name a boring or dangerous job. Somewhere, a robot is probably doing it. Robots are ideal for doing jobs that require repetitive, precise and fast movements. Robots are good at doing the same thing without asking for a safe working environment,salary, breaks, food and sleep, without getting bored or tired, without making mistakes. Factories are so highly automated that most human workers carry out only supervising and maintaining the robots.
People keep finding new uses for robots - making and packing drugs and foods, soldering tiny wires to semiconductor chips, insertingintegrated circuits onto printed circuit boards used in electronics, working in radioactive "hot zones", exploringspace.
All work and no play make anyone dull - even a robot. Soccer-playing robots gathereach year at RoboCup, an international event collecting over 100 teams from 35 countries. Robotic players use radio signals to coordinate their actions with their teammates. Teams are placed in divisions based on size, ranging from the size of a pizza box. By 2050, the organizers of RoboCup count ondeveloping a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can beat the human world champion team in soccer.