Question

    Scientists are trying to teach robots to read,so they can understand road signs and shop names to “l(fā)ive” 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：細節(jié)理解題。根據(jù)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，其目的就是讓機器人自己能做一賤 事情。

47. B解析:根據(jù)最后一段中Gregory Dudek所說的話可知選B.

48. B解析:詞義猜測題。根據(jù)語境可知：通 過識讀關(guān)著的門上貼的標簽，你有時可以 知道其中的內(nèi)涵。也就是說，識讀能讓你 發(fā)現(xiàn)(discover) 你沒有直接看到的東西。

49. A解析：推理判斷題。文章講述了科學 家教機器人識讀，目的是為了使它們能夠 學會自己生存。機器人學習識讀,顯然屬 于科學技術(shù)范疇，因此本文很可能節(jié)選自 報紙的科技專欄。