Question

    Scientists are trying to teach robots to read,so they can understand road signs and shop names to “live” for themselves. Experts believe developing literate artificial intelligence should be relatively simple because computers are already able to turn scanned books into text.

    A team of roboticists are working on a test robot— named Marge—which has been fitted with advanced Optical Character Recognition (OCR) reading software. It is hoped the fledgling technology can be used in rescue operations and work out where they are going inside buildings from signs. The early prototype version has been fitted with a dictionary and spellchecker so it can interpret text which is not clearly written.

     Doctor Ingmar Posner,a roboticist at the University of Oxford,says that a machine that can read will be a significant step forward. “By reading a label on a closed door you can sometimes get a good idea of what can be found behind it,he tells New Scientist. u Reading can help you detect things you cannot directly see. M However,the robot has had difficulties working out what is and is not writing—and still cannot read text on curved surfaces.

    Dr Posner adds, “The OCR software does not cater for the fact that it might not be seeing text. It tries its level best to force everything into text一brick walls,chimney stacks,everything. ”

    Once Marge has successfully read a word,it scans news websites like the MailOnline to look at its context and establish a meaning. It has already been able to work out that Barclays is a bank and Strada is a restaurant.

   Dr Posner is working on the scheme with Peter Corke at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia. Gregory Dudek,from McGill University in Montreal,Canada,describes teaching machines to read as ‘‘ refreshingly original I personally believe that exploiting OCR methods in a mobile robotics context makes a lot of sense, ” he says. “In fact,once you reflect on it,there is no doubt it will be highly useful. ”

46. According to the passage,robots are taught to read to

   A. let them guide the way for people

   B. help doctors to make operations

   C. develop their potential intelligence

   D. make them do things by themselves

47. According to Gregory Dudek,applying OCR to robots is.

   A. simple   B. useful

   C. creative   D. successful

48. The underlined word “detect” in Paragraph 3 can be replaced by

   A. remember   B. discover

   C. control   D. ensure

49. Which column of the newspaper is the passage probably taken from?

   A. Science. B. Education.

   C. Travel. D. Economy.

Answer 1

46. D 47. B 48. B 49. A

46. D解析：细节理解题。根据第一段第一 句 “ Scientists are trying to teach robots to read,so they can understand road signs and shop names to 4 live * for themselves. ” 可知，其目的就是让机器人自己能做一贱 事情。

47. B解析:根据最后一段中Gregory Dudek所说的话可知选B.

48. B解析:词义猜测题。根据语境可知：通 过识读关着的门上贴的标签，你有时可以 知道其中的内涵。也就是说，识读能让你 发现(discover) 你没有直接看到的东西。

49. A解析：推理判断题。文章讲述了科学 家教机器人识读，目的是为了使它们能够 学会自己生存。机器人学习识读,显然属 于科学技术范畴，因此本文很可能节选自 报纸的科技专栏。