If someone created a flying machine capable of tracking you down by listening for your voice, you might be terrified. But what if you were trapped in ruins after a natural disaster and first responders couldn’t locate you? Maybe then a human-seeking drone (无人机) wouldn’t be such a terrible idea. That concept is the focus for engineers at German’s Fraunhofer FIE Institute, who’ve built a drone to find people by detecting (探测) human screams.
“The human-seeking drone would be ideal for post-disaster situations, such as earthquakes, hurricanes and wildfires”, said Macarena Varela, one of the lead engineers. “They could hover over an area that rescue crews have difficulty getting to and locate exactly where people may be trapped.”
Locating people by sound presents its share of challenges. An auditory (听觉的) system would need to distinguish human cries from sounds that often happen in nature, such as animal calls and wind. It might also need to recognize patterns associated with kicking, clapping or other ways people try to get the attention of rescue teams.
Engineers took those situations into account when building out their concept drone. They recorded themselves screaming, tapping and creating other noises that might be a sign of people in trouble. Then, they analyzed each sound frequency to find common signatures and used those to train artificial intelligence software. They also worked to remove the noise created by the drone and other environmental sounds.
Once the software part was complete, the team placed tiny digital microphones under the drone and used signal processing techniques that enabled them to track where human noises are coming from. The microphones also enhanced the volume and clarity of the speech. So far, they have conducted successful open field experiments, finding that the drone can estimate a victim’s location within a few seconds of picking up sound.
Next, they would like to add a higher frequency microphone to a drone to acquire more audio sound signals. The idea is to pick up noises from hundreds of meters away, Varela said. In the real world, victim's location data might one day be sent wirelessly to emergency crews carrying a tablet.
1. What can the auditory system do?| A．Recognize human cries. | B．Pick up sounds from far away. |
| C．Send victim’s location data to a tablet. | D．Improve the quality of human screams. |
| A．Effects. | B．Symbols. | C．Features. | D．Situations. |
| A．Its high speed of flying. | B．Its long working hours. |
| C．Its quick response to screams. | D．Its easy access to disaster scene. |
| A．AI Enables Drones to Give Better Performance |
| B．Human-seeking Drones Replace Rescue Crews |
| C．Rescuers Use Drones to Locate Disaster Survivors |
| D．Engineers Teach Drones to Hunt Human Screams |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Alexa is a form of artificial intelligence, or AI for short. Many people start their mornings by asking Alexa for the weather forecast or the latest news. A device(设备) that houses Alexa can also play music from your favorite playlists, keep a shopping list, order takeout food, answer questions, send messages and even run “smart” home controls.
Training AI systems to respond to problems with human-like intelligence and learn from their mistakes can take months, or even years. Consider Alexa and similar software, such as Apple’s Siri. To do the tasks its human owners ask, these systems must make sense of and then respond to sentences such as, “Alexa, play my Ed Sheeran playlist” or “Siri, what is the capital of India?”
Computers can’ t understand language as it is spoken by people. So AI researchers must find a way to help humans communicate with computers. The technology used to get computers to “understand” human speech or text is known as natural language processing. By natural language, computer scientists refer to the way people naturally talk or write. To teach an AI system a task like comprehending(理解) a sentence or responding to a person ’s last move in a board game, scientists need to feed it lots of examples.
AlphaGo is an AI system designed by Google that has beaten a human champion, Lee Sedol, at the strategy(策略) board game Go. To train AlphaGo, Google had to show it 30 million Go moves that people had made while playing the game. Then AlphaGo used what it learned to analyze those plays as it played against different versions (版本) of itself. During this practice, the program came up with new moves---ones never seen in games between people.
1. What does the example of Alexa show?| A．AI may replace humans one day. | B．AI is playing a role in our modern life. |
| C．AI has been widely used around the world. | D．AI has totally changed people’s bad habits. |
| A．By testing them thousands of times. | B．By teaching them almost everything. |
| C．By giving them quite a lot of tasks to do. | D．By providing them with large amounts of data. |
| A．It has become very skillful and intelligent | B．It is the most convenient AI system. |
| C．It avoids making any mistakes | D．It just follows human orders |
【推荐2】If you’re a pasta (面食) lover, then you know there’re fat noodles, round noodles, shells, and many, many more. Some of these pastas, like ordinary spaghetti, pack easily into small box or package. But others require much larger boxes or bags because of their hard 3D shapes.
Now a team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and Zhejiang University has figured out a way that pasta can be packed flat, like sticks of gum in a package, and still form fancy 3D shapes once cooked.
Lining Yao who leads the “Morphing Matter Lab” says the team admires flat-pack furniture sold by IKEA that comes tightly packed in a box, but then can be built into a large piece of furniture which takes up a much greater amount of space.
To bring the flat-pack idea to the pasta world, the researchers used computers to help them plan their groove (凹槽) patterns and stamped grooves in the pasta. “The groove side expands less than the smooth side, leading the pasta to change into shape,” explains Teng Zhang, one of the researchers. But knowing where to make them is the trick. By doing that, the researchers are able to fix the shape of the pasta in the end.
Professor Yao has also worked to make noodles fold before, by adding something special that could be eaten to the surface of the pasta. This time, though, the pasta is made with just the right amount of flour and water, and the only things affecting the shape are the grooves.
The new pasta tastes just like ordinary pasta once it is cooked. Meanwhile, this method does not affect the pasta production speed and preservation time. The team hopes their new method will help us in two ways. Like flat-pack furniture, it should take up less space when it’s being transported, which is much easier on the environment. The pasta should also require much less packaging, meaning far less plastic waste.
1. What do we know about pastas from Paragraph 1?| A．They come in different shapes. | B．They are not easy to transport. |
| C．They need to be packed strictly. | D．They are only kept in large boxes. |
| A．The ways of cooking the pasta. | B．The style of gum in a package. |
| C．The furniture design from IKEA. | D．The 3D shapes after it’s cooked. |
| A．By applying the computer apps. | B．By making grooves in right spots. |
| C．By adding the right amount of four. | D．By coating it with something special. |
| A．To produce it more easily. | B．To get it more tasty. |
| C．To keep it longer. | D．To make it greener. |
【推荐3】Microsoft has developed a new smart phone app that interprets eye signals and translates them into letters, allowing people with motor neurone disease to communicate with others from a phone.
The GazeSpeak app combines a smartphone’s camera with artificial intelligence to recognize eye movements in real time and convert(改变) them into letters, words and sentences.
For people suffering from ALS（渐冻症）, also known as motor neurone disease, eye movement can be the only way they are able to communicate.
“Current eye-tracking input systems for people with ALS or other motor impairments are expensive, not robust under sunlight, and require frequent re-calibration and substantial, relatively immobile setups,” said Xiaoyi Zhang, a researcher at Microsoft who developed the technology.
“To mitigate the drawbacks…we created GazeSpeak, an eye-gesture communication system that runs on a smartphone, and is designed to be low-cost, robust, portable and easy to learn.”
The app is used by the listener by pointing their smartphone at the speaker. A chart that can be stuck to the back of the smartphone is then used by the speaker to determine which eye movements to make in order to communicate.
The sticker shows four grids(方格) of letters, which each correspond to a different eye movement. By looking up, down, left or right, the speaker selects which grids the letters they want belong to. The artificial intelligence algorithm（程序） is then able to predict the word or sentence they are trying to say.
1. What does the underlined word “mitigate” in paragraph 5 probably mean?| A．ignore | B．destroy |
| C．increase | D．reduce |
| A．The advantages of Gaze Speak over the Current eye-tracking input systems. |
| B．Smartphone App helps ALS suffers speak with their eyes movement. |
| C．The sticker plays an important role in Gaze Speak. |
| D．The writer is making an advertisement for Gaze Speaker. |
| A．doubtful | B．negative |
| C．favorable | D．unclear |
【推荐1】Space exploration has always been the province of dreamers: The human imagination soars where human ingenuity (创造力) struggles to follow. A Voyage to the Moon, often cited as the first science fiction story, was written by Cyrano de Bergerac in 1649. Cyrano was dead and buried for a good three centuries before the first manned rockets started to fly.
In 1961, when President Kennedy declared that America would send a man to the moon by the decade’s end, those words, too, had a dreamlike quality. They reflected optimism and ambition in much the same way as the most famous dream speech of all, delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. two years later. By the end of the decade, both visions had yielded concrete results and transformed American society. And yet in many ways the two dreams ended up at odds with each other. The fight for racial and economic equality is intensely pragmatic (讲求实用的) and immediate in its impact. The urge to explore space is just the opposite. It is literally unrealistic in its aims.
When the dust settled, the space dreamers lost out. There was no grand follow-up to the Apollo missions. The technologically compromised space shuttle program has just come to an end, with no successor. The continuous argument is that funds are tight, that we have more pressing problems here on Earth. Amid the current concerns about the federal deficit (联邦赤字), reaching toward the stars seems an unnecessary luxury--as if saving one-thousandth of a single year’s budget would solve our problems.
But human ingenuity struggles on. NASA is developing a series of robotic probes that will get the most bang for a buck. They will serve as modern Magellan, mapping out the solar system for whatever explorers follow, whether man or machine. On the other hand, companies like Virgin Galactic are plotting a bottom-up attack on the space dream by making it a reality to the public. Private spaceflight could lie within reach of rich civilians in a few years. Another decade or two and it could go main stream.
The space dreamers end up benefiting all of us--not just because of the way they expand human knowledge, or because of the technologies they produce, but because the two types of dreams feed off each other. Both Martin Luther King and John Kennedy appealed to the idea that humans can transcend what were once considered inherent limitations. Today we face challenges in energy, the environment and healthcare. Tomorrow we will transcend these as well, and the dreamers will deserve a lot of the credit. The more evidence we collect that our species is capable of greatness, the more we will actually achieve it.
1. The author mentions Cyrano de Bergerac in order to show that ________.| A．ingenuity is essential for science fiction writers |
| B．imagination is the mother of invention |
| C．it takes patience for humans to realize their dreams |
| D．dreamers have always been interested in science fiction |
| A．It symbolized the American dream. |
| B．It was as urgent as racial equality. |
| C．It sounded very much like a dream. |
| D．It made an ancient dream come true. |
| A．It may not bring about immediate economic gains. |
| B．It cannot be realized without technological innovation. |
| C．It will not help the realization of racial and economic equality. |
| D．It cannot be achieved without a good knowledge of the other worlds. |
| A．Contradict. | B．Support. | C．Weaken. | D．Substitute for. |
It’s only in the last 100 years that entertainment began taking precedence and grew so huge that a sort of line was drawn between technology and art, assuming something too technology-driven could not be a serious form of art.
Earlier, art was at the center and entertainment was an offshoot of art. Now of course entertainment is the focus and art is increasingly peripheral. Hence people don’t see the obvious and fundamental connection between art and technology. Technology impacts the form of art and also affects the relationship between the audience, creator, and the artists involved.
On the synthesis of form and content in the Freespace Tech Lab shows
The sound and kinetic installation shows in the Freespace Tech Lab series (presented under the aegis of West Kowloon Cultural District Authority) are like a complete synthesis of form and content. The show is what one experiences and each viewer experiences it differently.
The reason why I picked Wittgenstein (sketches by the Austro-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1889-1951, appear like a leitmotif in the show) is because of his idea of the language game. It’s about how our language affects the way we define our world. Wittgenstein’s idea of language is so aligned with what we today call fake news. We live in a time when increasingly things do not mean what they seemed at first.
On creating a performance space boxed in by mirrors
Buddhists used mirrors in a meditation space. Medieval churches were built in a way to provide the best acoustics for choir singing, as they did not have electric amplifiers. The Buddha sculptures in Thailand were painted gold to illuminate the space.
Over time, entertainment has taken the place of religion in people’s lives. Often there is a lot of violence built into entertainment.
On drawing the audience’s attention to the basic features of a stage production
As artists, how we deal with technology, how we use it for creative ends and try to find meaning from the relationships between art and technology can be very challenging. So for this project we focused on the basic elements used on a stage — sound, lights, images, props, and space. We are not doing “nice” here. We experiment with frequency — ultra-sonic and sub-sonic sounds. We explore possibilities of structuring super high-pitch sounds to create different experiences.
On the idea behind putting the audience inside a soundbox
Nowadays most people use headphones. These have some limitations. So putting people inside a resonating box is somewhat manipulative. It’s not real.
In this soundscape space, the use of speaker phones is an attempt to create a total environment. That’s how you create depth of sound. In a cinema theater, the audience sits still, but in this show you are allowed to move around.
Because this is a black box theater, with mirror walls, every bit of the experience is multiplied several times over. The effect is enhanced. It’s quite an immersive experience. You are not wearing virtual reality glasses but you are surrounded by a similar effect.
The interesting thing is that the mirror too is simulated. But the image you see is more real than reality.
Sound is about vibration. The mirror vibrates with the sound and one gets to visualize the sound. During the digital image projections, the effect of vibrations came through especially well.
On getting a regular theater-goer interested in the technical side of a production
The Freespace Tech Lab series is an experimental project which does not allow for caring about a possible audience. If I cared about audience response, that would be for entertainment, which I would expect to sell. It’s alright if people are able to share what we create, but I am not looking to produce the perfect product for the consumer market.
Here I’m more like a scientist or an academic doing research. So the shows are short, like a fragment.
On whether the use of infinite reflections on mirrored walls is a comment on our increasing tendency to be self-referential
The mirror is not just a mirror. These days our vision is fixated on a palm-sized illuminated rectangle. In that sense, I'm opening up the range of our vision, surrounded by giant mirrors. The mirror has been a very potent metaphor since time immemorial. It was the earliest technology used to create images before the camera came along. It’s my way of competing with the little illuminated rectangle that seems fitted to our palms.
On why he does not see theater as therapy
It’s not as if you go in and come out cleansed of your toxicity, but you experience the extremes, jarring notes, what light and sound can do. You have an intense experience, including experiencing the silences.
1. What is the writing style of the passage?| A．a scientific report | B．a blog post | C．a daily journal | D．a TV news |
| A．On the increasing co-dependence between technology and art |
| B．On the discovery of the high technology used for art show |
| C．On the idea of using technology to create art |
| D．On the innovation of high technology in art field |
| A．objective | B．subjective | C．indifferent | D．ignorant |
【推荐3】SHOULD WE FIGHT NEW TECHNOLOGY?
This morning, I saw the shocking headline: “Passenger Dies When Car Crashes in Driverless Mode”.In the article, a lot of people said that the public should oppose the idea of developing driverless cars.They said that some advances in technology were unnecessary and could even be dangerous.Hence, we should cease accepting technology just because it is new.The newspaper reported that the car company had already apologized for the accident, but the families of the deceased said it was not enough.Nevertheless, the company still claimed that most people would be travelling in driverless cars one day soon.
On the one hand, there are many different groups of people around the world who live happily in the absence of new technology.Probably the most well known are the Amish, a group of Christians living in rural America.They do not own or drive cars, watch TV, or use the Internet.They have lived mainly as farmers since the 18th century, and they will probably be living the same way in the distant future.They advocate a simple life with an emphasis on hard work, family, and community.They think that is better than caring about luxuries or following the lives of the rich and famous.It could even be argued that the Amish’s quality of life is better since they live in and appreciate the natural environment rather than living in large, polluted cities.
On the other hand, new technology has provided people everywhere with many benefits over the years.For example, the latest weather-tracking computer programs give people lots of warnings about potential natural disasters, which saves many lives.Moreover, the Internet has made it possible for friends and family to keep in touch easily even if they are on opposite sides of the world.It has also made finding opportunities in life much easier, as it allows people to make larger networks of friends through using social media.
Personally, I have benefited quite a lot from technological advances.I found my career as an AI designer through a social media network.My health monitor, which I wear all the time, has also helped me get into the best shape of my life.Of course, when new technology changes the way we live, it can be a scary prospect.Nevertheless, I will always look on the positive side of change and accept it rather than resist it.
1. What can we learn from the first paragraph?| A．A person died in an accident while driving his brand-new car. |
| B．The relatives of the victim would never accept the apology. |
| C．Many people took a negative attitude to this new technology. |
| D．The company was very concerned about the future of this new technology. |
| A．To persuade us to follow their natural living style. |
| B．To tell us the Amish prefer a harmonious and peaceful life. |
| C．To prove people can still live better without new technology. |
| D．To advocate a simple life with family and community by hard work. |
| A．Monitoring people’s physical health. |
| B．Providing chances in life more easily. |
| C．Predicting the earthquake and tsunami. |
| D．Helping people contact each other easily. |
| A．resistance | B．future | C．advance | D．positivity |
| A．The author wanted to praise the advantages of new technology. |
| B．The author wanted to show his supportive idea of new technology. |
| C．The author wanted to criticize the disadvantages of new technology. |
| D．The author wanted to arouse people’s concern about new technology. |
【推荐1】Yesterday morning, I was riding my bike up a pretty significant hill. To get up that hill, I was, pedaling as hard as I could. I had nearly reached the top when I felt that familiar stream of water run down my forehead. Even though it was only 6℃ (42℉), I was sweating.
Our human bodies work in the best state when their internal temperature hovers around 98.6℉(37℃). When the body gets warmer than that, the brain doesn't like it, so the part that controls temperature sends a message to your body saying “Let's cool down !” That's when your sweat glands (汗腺) spring into action, and you start sweating.
Sweat is made almost completely of water, with smaller amounts of other chemicals in it as well. (We'll get to that in a moment. ) Sweat leaves our body through tiny holes in our skin called pores (毛穴), and when the sweat meets the air, it begins evaporating( turning from a liquid to vapor) and during this course it can. cool us down.
Sweat is a great cooling system, and it is also a great way for our body to remove certain elements from our bloodstream. Salt, ammonia, and urea (尿素), to name a few. Our sweat also contains biochemical markers such as metabolites (代谢物) and even heavy metals, which can give doctors and researchers a window into a person's health and even aid in diagnosing some diseases. In recent years , scientists have developed sweat sensors in the form of patches, bandages, and tattoos that can make these types of measurements on the fly. A team of scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, is developing wearable skin sensors that can detect what's in your sweat. But before we get into that, let's look at how we measured sweat in the past, and how we're looking at it today.
1. Why was the author sweating in the first paragraph?| A．He had been biking very hard. | B．The temperature was very high. |
| C．He was too excited to reach the top. | D．He was suffering from a certain disease. |
| A．The parts in which people sweat. | B．The way in which people sweat. |
| C．The reason for which people sweat. | D．The results that sweating leads to. |
| A．Skeptical. | B．Positive. | C．Tolerant. | D．Conservative. |
| A．Benefits of Sweat | B．Components of Sweat |
| C．A recent Study About Sweat | D．Some Information About Sweat |
【推荐2】Success and Risk in Extreme Sports
What is it that drives some to take extreme risks, while the rest of us hurry for the safety of the sidelines?
Lester Keller, sports-psychology expert, says that not everyone has the mental makeup to do well in extreme sports. He notes that most of us hit a natural ceiling that limits our appetite for extreme risk in tricky conditions. But others have a much higher tolerance for risk. Keller points to a top ski racer. He told Keller that “the high element of risk makes you feel alive, tests what you are made of and how far you can take yourself”. He said he would get nervous on some of the courses, but that this would just make him fight more.
Psychologists note that some people seem to have a strong desire for adrenaline (肾上腺素) rushes as a behavior seeking excited feelings. Like many extreme athletes, Emily Cook’s appetite for risk appeared at a young age. “I was a gymnast,” she said. “I was one of those kids who enjoyed and did well at anything where you were upside down.” As she started doing harder tricks, she was drawn to the challenge. “There are moments when you’re up there doing a new trick and it seems like an impossible thing. But overcoming that is just the coolest feeling in the world.”
Shane Murphy, sports professor, has worked with groups climbing Everest. “To me, that just seems like the height of risk,” he said. “But to them it was the next step in an activity that they’ve prepared for years.” Murphy said the view of extreme athletes is different from our own. “We look at a risky situation and know that if we were in that situation we would be out of control. But from the athletes’ view, they have a lot of control, and there are many things that they do to minimize risk.”
Another aspect of risk perception (认知) may be something referred to as “the flow”, a state in which many athletes become absorbed in the acts that focus the mind completely on the present. “Something that makes you try doing a tougher climb than usual, perhaps, is that your adrenaline flows and you become very concentrated on what you’re doing,” Murphy says. “After it’s over, there’s great excitement.”
People of different skill levels experience the flow at different times. Some may always be driven to adventures that others consider extreme. “I can enjoy hitting a tennis ball around, because that’s my skill level,” Murphy says. “But others might need the challenge of Olympic competition.”
1. By using the term “natural ceiling” in Paragraph 2, Lester Keller points out that ______.| A．extreme athletes must learn special skills |
| B．extreme athletes have chances to take risks |
| C．many people don’t want to do extreme sports |
| D．many people can’t limit desire for extreme sports |
| A．They put in lots of preparation for challenges. |
| B．They are more fortunate than other sportspeople. |
| C．They carry little risk when facing big challenges. |
| D．They have special reasons that others can’t easily understand. |
| A．Extreme athletes use techniques other people don’t use. |
| B．Non-athletes are probably wise not to try extreme sports. |
| C．Most people lack the focus required to take bigger risks. |
| D．A certain state of mind makes attempting an activity more likely. |
| A．risk-taking is something you either naturally do or avoid |
| B．those who take risks are more likely to be successful in life |
| C．extreme athletes are driven by a need to be better than others |
| D．taking part in extreme sports is not as difficult as people think |
【推荐3】Most online fraud(诈骗) involves identity theft Passwords help. But many can be guessed. Newer phones, tablets, laptops and desktop computers often have strengthened security with fingerprint and facial recognition. But these can be imitated. That is why a new approach, behavioural biometrics(行为生物识别) is gaining ground.
It relies on the wealth of measurements made by today’s devices. These include data from sensors that reveal how people hold their phones when using them, how they carry them and even the way they walk. Touchscreens, keyboards and mice can be monitored(监测) to show the distinctive ways in which someone’s fingers and hands move. These features can then be used to determine whether someone attempting to make a deal is likely to be the device’s habitual user.
“Behavioural biometrics make it possible to identify an individual’s unique motion fingerprint”, says John Whaley, head of Unifyid, a firm in Silicon Valley that is involved in the field. When coupled with information about a user’s finger pressure and speed on the touchscreen, as well as a device’s regular places of use—as revealed by its GPS unit—that user’s identity can be pretty well determined.
Used wisely, behavioural biometrics could be a great benefit. In fact, Unifyid and an unnamed car company are even developing a system that unlocks the doors of a vehicle once the pace of the driver, as measured by his phone, is recognized. Used unwisely, however, the system would become yet another electronic spy on people’s privacy, permitting complete strangers to monitor your every action, from the moment you reach for your phone in the morning, to when you throw it on the floor at night.
1. What is behavioural biometrics for?| A．To identify network crime | B．To ensure network security. |
| C．To track online fraud. | D．To gather online data. |
| A．By limiting and discovering users’ passwords. |
| B．By spotting and revealing where a device is regularly used. |
| C．By offering and analyzing users’ facial features. |
| D．By monitoring and comparing how users interact with devices. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Concerned | C．Favorable. | D．Objective. |
| A．Science and technology. | B．Health and wealth. |
| C．Finance and economics | D．Books and arts |
