灾难救援机器人：未来不是梦.docVIP

灾难救援机器人：未来不是梦 　　2015年8月12日晚，天津滨海新区发生重大爆炸事故，事故造成多人伤亡，多名现场救援的消防官兵不幸遇难。看到这条消息，很多人除了震惊、惋惜、哀叹，也不禁会想：可否让救援机器人代替消防员去救援？确实，在很多国家，救援机器人已经投入使用，但实际上它们能做的工作极为有限，而且研发也困难重重。不过，幸运的是，很多科研机构和机器人专家正致力于这方面的探索。相信在不久的将来，我们会看到救援机器人在灾难现场第一时间救人于危难。 　　Dennis Hong first spied Japan’s ruined nuclear power plant from a bus wrapped in plastic. A hefty layer of protection guarded the seats， floors and handles from radioactive dust. Hong wore a face mask and gloves to limit his exposure. 　　More than three years earlier， after an earthquake and tsunami battered Japan’s eastern coast， portions of the Fukushima Daiichi power station blew， blasting radiation into the sea and sky. Today， villages outside the plant still lie as barren as ghost towns. Along the coast， smashed buildings， flipped cars and train tracks twisted like taffy stand as reminders of the catastrophe. 　　“It’s like a disaster site frozen in time，” Hong says. “It’s surreal.” 　　Workers toiled day and night to save the plant， but they had to get out as radiation levels rose. Even today in disaster areas not tainted with radiation， picking through the destroyed buildings is treacherous： People need to dodge shards of glass and metal and duck1） clouds of smoke and dust. 　　Ideally， robots could take over2） for human crews. But seemingly simple tasks， such as moving， communicating and staying powered up， pose big challenges for3） machines. 　　Hong， a UCLA roboticist， is one of several engineers working to make robots that can come to the rescue in disasters. He and others from academia， industry， NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and the Defense Department’s research agency DARPA traveled to Fukushima last spring to see what they were up against. 　　“The take-home message4） was ‘Wow， it’s damn difficult，’ ” Hong says. 　　A Better Bot 　　Engineers have built impressive looking humanlike bots that can play trumpet and even compete against each other in slow-moving soccer games. But machines that can actually do the work of humans in disast