From rolling hills to mountain ranges, views make any road trip memorable, but for blind passenger this is part of the experience they miss. Motor company Ford tries to change that. It teamed up with GTB Roma and Ae do Project to develop a technology that will give those unfortunate passengers a way to feel nature’s beauty through their car windows.
The prototype (原型) of the smart car window has a device with an outside-facing camera. With just a press of a button, the system takes a picture of the current view. The colorful picture is then turned into an image with different shades of grey through LED lights, which vibrates (震动) differently. As the finger passes over different regions of the image, its shaking movements provide feedback through the sense of touch to the person using it. The smart window also comes with a voice assistant that uses Al to identify the scene and help the passengers get information on what they’re seeing.
“As the prototype started taking shape, we realized we were giving birth to a completely new language that would give blind people a new chance to visualize and experience traveling,” Federico Russo, one director of GTB Roma, said. “When the idea was at its first stage, we looked for suppliers all around the world to make it come to life.“ He believes the technology can be employed not just in cars. “It could be introduced into schools and institutions for blind people as a tool that could be used in multiple ways.”
The technology may show up in a Ford autonomous vehicle. It’s known that the company is testing their technology and future business model and struggling to figure out how an autonomous vehicle gives different passengers the details needed to get from one destination to another. It’s unclear when this technology will be made available. However, the idea of building something for the less advantaged is indeed a kind and influential action.
1. How does the smart car window work?| A．By reacting to changing colors. |
| B．By translating scenery into vibrations. |
| C．By controlling shaking movements with voice. |
| D．By searching for the previously stored pictures. |
| A．It will have a wide application. |
| B．It will make language learning easy. |
| C．It will soon be tested across the world. |
| D．It will change traditional way of travelling. |
| A．Developing autonomous cars. |
| B．Enabling the disabled to drive cars. |
| C．Replacing the traditional business model. |
| D．Providing personalized route information. |
| A．AI-based Window Adds Fun to Road Trips |
| B．Technology Makes People’s Life Enjoyable |
| C．Ford Plans to Launch a Smart Car for the Blind |
| D．Smart Window Lets Blind Passengers Feel Views |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Hugging probably isn’t the first thing when thinking about what robots could help humankind with. Alexis E. Block and her colleagues have been involved in the HuggieBot project for years, trying to be trailblazers of a robot that could deliver human-like hugs.
The creators of HuggieBot 3.0 claim that it is “the first fully autonomous human-sized hugging robot”. It features a custom sensing system called “HuggieChest” consisting of two inflated (膨胀的) parts to imitate a soft chest. But there’s a lot more than a soft chest to the HuggieBot 3.0. The advanced robot delivers hugs using a pair of arms mounted to a custom metal frame (框架) that were selected for being human-like, quiet, and safe. As a hug takes place, a pressure sensor and microphone inside the artificial chest detect human touch and begin transmitting data via a board to a Robot Operating System (ROS)-based computer located in the HuggieBot 3.0’s 3D-printed head.
The team used feedback from 512 real people over 32 trials to train a machine learning system. “The HuggieBot 3.0 can stay still, move slightly vertically (垂直地), tap or pat a person’s back and squeeze with-varying degrees of pressure The team wrote in a recent study.
Alexis E. Block started working on the original HuggieBot back in 2016. The first version was built on six “hugging commandments” to autonomously enter into and end a hug. The HuggieBot 2.0 took the project a step further by integrating sensing perception, but the 3.0 version is the most advanced version with five added hugging commandments to deliver a human, like hugging experience.
In a recent test, 12 participants who hugged the robot for longer declared that they felt it was “significantly nicer to hug” than previous ones.
The HuggieBot 3.0 isn’t perfect, and its creators point out that it isn’t quite like hugging a real person just yet, but they are already working on a fourth version that should come with improved hug positioning and techniques. They hope that one day HuggieBot will be able to take the place of the sensation of human bugging to perfection.
1. What does the underlined word “trailblazers” in Paragraph 1 probably mean?| A．Trackers. | B．Protectors. | C．Pioneers. | D．Criticizers. |
| A．Its designing process. | B．Its main function. |
| C．Its working principle. | D．Its practical usage. |
| A．It works fully autonomously. | B．It perceives people’s senses. |
| C．It pats and squeezes a person gently. | D．It offers human life hugging experience. |
| A．Promising. | B．Far-reaching. | C．Profitable. | D．Uncertain. |
【推荐2】From Wi-Fi-connected home security systems to smart toilets, the so-called Internet of Things (IOT) brings personalization and convenience to devices that help run homes. But with that come batteries that need to be replaced frequently. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Energy Materials have brought solar panel technology indoors to power smart devices. They show which photovoltaic (PV) (光伏) systems work best under cool white LEDs, a common type of indoor lighting.
Indoor lighting differs from sunlight. Light bulbs are dimmer than the sun, and sunlight includes ultraviolet, infrared and visible light, while indoor lights typically shine light from a narrower region of the spectrum (光谱). Scientists have found ways to harness power from sunlight, using PV solar panels, but those panels are not the best for turning indoor light into electrical energy. Some next-generation PV materials have been tested with indoor light, but it’s not clear which are the most efficient at turning non-natural light into electricity.
So, the researchers compared a range of different PV technologies under the same type of indoor lighting. The researchers obtained eight types of PV devices, ranging from traditional amorphous silicon to thin-film technologies such as dye-sensitized solar cells. They measured each material’s ability to turn light into electricity, first under simulated sunlight and then under a cool white LED light.
Gallium indium phosphide (磷化镓铟) PV cells showed the greatest efficiency under indoor light, turning nearly 40% of the light energy into electricity. As the researchers had expected, the gallium-containing material’s performance under sunlight was proper relative to the other materials tested due to its large band gap.
Gallium indium phosphide has not been used in commercially available PV cells yet, but this study points to its potential beyond solar power, the researchers say. However, they add that the gallium-containing materials are expensive and may not serve as a viable mass product to power smart home systems. Additionally, in the study, the researchers identified that part of the indoor light energy produced heat instead of electricity — information that will help improve future PVs to power indoor devices.
1. What normally goes hand in hand with home IOT?| A．Abandoned batteries. | B．A huge electricity-free device. |
| C．Inexpensive indoor solar panels. | D．A common type of indoor lighting. |
| A．Track. | B．Hide. | C．Employ. | D．Prevent. |
| A．They are accessible and affordable for the public. |
| B．They actually produce heat instead of electricity. |
| C．They show little efficiency under indoor light. |
| D．They are not perfect enough to be popularized. |
| A．Solar Panel Technology Is Losing Its Dominant Place |
| B．Gallium-containing Materials Are Running Out Rapidly |
| C．Internet of Things Are Greatly Influencing Our Daily Life |
| D．PV Systems Are Stepping Indoors to Power Smart Devices |
【推荐3】Your next car might drive itself. After years of trials on city streets, driverless vehicles are now nearing the live phase. Last month, a driverless bus began carrying passengers through Lyon, France. Most in the automobile industry think self-driving vehicles will be on the road by 2020 or before.
Driverless cars will at first be huddled with human-driven cars. But the first places where they will become dominant (统治的) are dense urban areas — precisely the spots most damaged by the automobile age. Many advanced cities are already reducing the role of human-driven cargo. Driverless cars will quicken that process and will bring us enormous benefits.
Driverless cars will reduce accidents by around 90 percent. That’s big—the annual death toll on the world’s roads is about 1.2 million a year. Pollution and carbon emissions will drop, because urban driverless cars will be electric. The old, otherwise they would stay at home most of the time and the disabled and teenagers will suddenly gain mobility.
On the other hand, driverless cars will bring catastrophe. The best thing about the automobile age was that it employed tens of millions of people to make, market, insure and drive vehicles. Over the next 20 years, the mostly low-skilled men who now drive trucks, taxis and buses will see their jobs reduced. Carmakers are especially scared. The few cars of the future might be made by tech companies such as Apple, Baidu and Google. Imaging the impact on Germany, where the automotive sector is the largest industry.
Dramatic change is coming, and driverless cars could arrive by 2020. But governments have barely begun thinking about it. Only 6 percent of the biggest US cities have factored them into their long-term planning.
A decade ago anyone hardly saw the Smartphone coming. It has bought an epidemic of mass addiction. Let’s hope we do a better job of handling the driverless car.
1. The underlined words “be huddled with” in Paragraph 2 can be replaced by “ ”.| A．show up | B．exist together |
| C．get rid of | D．take the place of |
| A．Driverless cars reduce the number of cars. |
| B．Driverless cars will be powered by electricity. |
| C．Driverless cars save fuel by driving themselves. |
| D．Driverless cars will reduce too many accidents. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Negative. |
| C．Objective. | D．Worried. |
| A．They will not hit the road until 2020. |
| B．They will only be used in urban areas. |
| C．They will not cause any road accident. |
| D．They aren’t still seriously taken by leaders. |
【推荐1】When you "like" a story online, you're not just telling your social media followers that you like it, you're also exposing them to that story. And they, in turn, can expose others, and so on. We are interconnected in ways we can hardly imagine, and our little online actions can have big consequences. That can be a good thing, if the stories we share contain valuable information or ideas. But falsehoods are dangerous, and when they spread they can cause real harm. Yet we seem blindly willing to share stories whose truth we are not sure of.
Why do we transmit false information? One reason is that we too easily believe that it's actually true. We all suffer from confirmation bias, the readiness to accept evidence that confirms our views, and to reject evidence that contradicts them. Another reason we transmit falsehoods is that we often don't care if a story is true or not. If we treat information as more entertainment than news, then we share what pleases us, without considering what might happen if others believe it is true.
It reveals a fundamental lack of care in how we handle information. This is particularly troubling in the social media age. We have suddenly acquired unprecedented powers to transmit information in an instant to millions of others. But we have yet to learn how to handle that power mindfully and ethically.
Compare this to the history of infectious disease. Changes in living conditions through population explosions and urbanization introduced drastic new risks of infection. With no knowledge of how diseases actually spread, people actively contributed to the crisis with dangerous behavior such as poor sanitation. But in time, scientific breakthroughs in our understanding of how diseases spread not only revolutionized our day-to-day practices -from washing our hands to vaccinating our children -they set new standards of accountability in our individual behavior. As it became commonly known that germs carry discase, we learned that sneezing onto people could be harmful to their health. And as it became known that vaccination works, we learned that it protects our kids and ourselves as well as the broader population.
We need to apply the same ethical reason in our handling of information in this age of truth decay (没落). In his article "The Ethics of Belief", philosopher William Clifford argued that "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence". Among his reasons for saying this were that it compromised our shared culture of respect for evidence and reason: "The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough: but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them".
What we urgently need now are advances in information literacy. This must start with a true appreciation of our susceptibility to falsehood and its dangers, and it must lead to an individual sense of duty to pause, think, and check before passing on information.
1. People share false information online partly because ________.| A．they are easily affected by mistaken ideas |
| B．they take news authenticity lightly |
| C．they tend to misinterpret the actual news |
| D．they get news from unreliable sources |
| A．the importance of vaccination for health care |
| B．the power of scientific knowledge in discase control |
| C．the significance of acting for the public interests |
| D．the widespread presence of truth decay in the digital world |
| A．can be morally justifiable | B．is found in most cultures |
| C．encourages dishonesty in society | D．weakens the habit of reasoning |
| A．"It's no use crying over spilt milk" | B．"More haste, less speed" |
| C．"Look before you leap" | D．"Be just to all, but trust not all" |
【推荐2】Passwords don’t have to be a pain. There’s a way to choose and remember them with confidence. With the right approach, you can start using the process to your advantage, by setting passwords that also strengthen your memory.
Passwords should be complex and varied enough to be secure, yet still memorable. But with so many to keep track of, this can be hard to achieve. No wonder so many people use the same password over and over again or simply write them all down!
A much better idea is to follow a system. You save time at the setting stage, and have a clear pattern for your memory to follow. It’s good exercise for your brain and a valuable way to protect your identity online.
The following system uses letters, numbers and symbols, so it will please even the strictest website. And the random-looking codes it produces would be extremely difficult for someone to crack, but just enough of a challenge for your brain. First, choose a short quotation, one that no one would have any reason to associate with you. Pick out the initial letters—creating the first “building block” for your passwords. So, if you chose, “Play it again, Sam,” you’d have the letters PIAS.
Next, choose a meaningful date—again, one that can’t be guessed or easily researched. Maybe the year of a favourite holiday, 86, say.
Then add a random element by picking any two keyboard symbols: for example, & and £.
Finally, organize these building blocks in any order you like. And strengthen the code further by making some of the letters lower case, and some upper: maybe 86&£PiAs.
Spend a little time getting to know this “foundation” for your passwords. “See” it in your mind’s eve. And then start using it as the basis for every new password you set. Add two or three extra letters each time, a few initials or abbreviations to remind you of what this particular password is for. For example, you might use BT for your phone account or CC for the camera club forum so the final password for your BBC account could be: BBC86&£PiAs.
With a system like this, you’ve got a basic formula to follow. But each password ends up being complex and unique, helping to protect your identity and giving your memory a cracking workout every time.
1. A password is supposed to be________.| A．complex and long | B．unique but easy to crack |
| C．complex but easy to remember | D．secure and difficult to remember |
| A．KRE. | B．SLP. | C．PLS. | D．EUA. |
| A．Think of a short sentence. | B．Select a proper number. |
| C．Choose two keyboard symbols. | D．Make some letters lower case. |
| A．HW03@*AsLT. | B．123456#. | C．QQ010&XYz. | D．!!!123Cba. |
【推荐3】With the graduation season approaching, millions of young college students are preparing to walk out of their schools and start their careers, But how will they take those first steps to transition (转变) from students to workers in today's fast-paced society?
A new show, the Shining One from Jiangsu TV, has caught the attention of young viewers who hope to learn how their peers are adjusting to this transition. It follows a group of students as they compete to be one of nine candidates who will get offers from companies in the highly-competitive securities industry. The competitors are given opportunities and challenges similar to those they may run into in real life within the industry. The show also has some observers providing comments on the competitors.
The show has become a hot talking point on social media platforms. Many viewers have said they see the show as "a guide book for young people just starting their career". It offers a glimpse into various aspects of the real world such as following one's passion, facing challenges and embracing. the spirit of cooperation.
One of the hot discussions on the show has been the debate over the importance of meeting deadlines and the pursuit (追求) of perfection. Some argued that in real life, you may have to take more time with a task to make it perfect, while others said it is more important for these green hands to submit their work on time, which is the most important rule in the professional context.
Statistics from China’s Ministry of Education predict that China will see a total of 9. 09 million college graduates in 2021, a new high, How to provide guidance to these graduates so that they can develop the right mindset toward work and the needs to be answered.
1. Why is the Shining One held for college graduates?| A．To provide them with career guidance. |
| B．To improve their communication abilities. |
| C．To test their academic skills learnt at school. |
| D．To make them learn about securities industry. |
| A．comment each others performance |
| B．finish the task with their observers |
| C．get a chance to work in a company |
| D．earn their fames through social media |
| A．Skeptical. | B．Objective. |
| C．Indifferent. | D．Subjective. |
| A．In a history book. | B．In a fiction novel. |
| C．In an art magazine. | D．In a news report. |
【推荐1】“Robots are ready to replace millions of humans in various industries. But they're nowhere close to being human-like,” said Blake Hannaford, a robotics professor at the University of Washington in Seattle.
So far, robots don't really look or act like the sensitive beings described throughout science fiction. Rather, these basic machines are tasked with carrying out simple tasks that promote productivity around the workplace or factory. We are still decades away from a future where robots carry out more difficult and meaningful tasks.
But other aspects continue to have a significant influence on robotics. Robots are already performing some human functions. In everyday terms, that means your smartphone can do more with the same battery life. It also means quicker advances in artificial intelligence—things like computer vision and natural language processing that help robots “see” and learn.
Going forward, Hannaford said, robots will “free up people's brains” to perform other, more complex tasks. “There’s going to be a lot of people who fall by the wayside,” he said of the countless jobs that will be automated or disappear entirely.
More than 120 million workers worldwide (11.5 million in the U.S.) will need retraining just in the next few years due to replacement caused by artificial intelligence and robots, according to a recent IBM Institute for Business Values study. Not all of them will get that retraining, of course, but the ones who do will be more likely to gain new types of jobs brought by the robot revolution.
But some experts say the more robots surpass humans, the more humans will be expected to keep up.
“The way we have to start thinking about robots is not as a threat, but as something that we can work with in a co-operative way,” Hannaford said. “A lot of it is changing our own attitudes.”
1. What can we infer from what Hannaford said?| A．Robots will help make life easier for all of us. |
| B．We'll see some jobs taken over entirely by robots. |
| C．Robots are at a stage of being human-like. |
| D．It is likely that we will be wiped out by robots. |
| A．Robots in science fiction closely resemble us. |
| B．Robots can carry out complex actions automatically. |
| C．Humans will be replaced by robots in the near future. |
| D．The development of robots has a long way to go. |
| A．Complete fewer tasks than. | B．Do better than. |
| C．Make more mistakes than. | D．Get more retraining than. |
| A．Positive. | B．Opposed. |
| C．Uncaring. | D．Doubtful. |
【推荐2】ChatGPT is an AI chatbot (智能聊天程序) from OpenAI, an AI technology company In San Francisco. It can produce any kind of writing as required. Many schools are afraid that ChatGPT could result in dishonesty and harm learning. So the tool, called AI Text Classifier from the same maker, is invented. Its task is to decide whether the writing was produced by students or by AI programs.
OpenAI warns that its new tool—like others already in use—is not perfect. The method for detecting AI-written writing “will be wrong sometimes,” said Jan Leike of OpenAI. “Because of that,” he added, “it shouldn’t be only relied upon when making decisions.”
Teenagers and college students were among the millions of people who began experimenting with ChatGPT after it was put into use on November 30. The tool is a free service on OpenAI’s website. Many people have found ways to use it creatively and harmlessly. Still, some teachers are worried that it could be used to cheat.
So far public schools in some cities, such as New York City and Los Angeles, began to block (阻止) its use in classrooms and on school computers. Public schools in Seattle blocked ChatGPT on all school computers but then opened it to teachers. One spokesman Tim Robinson said teachers wanted to use ChatGPT as a teaching tool. “We can’t afford to ignore (忽视) it,” Robinson said. Students could also use the service as a “personal teacher” or to help create ideas when doing homework, Robinson said.
OpenAI talked about its new tool on a blog recently. But the company added that the tool could help to find some mistakes in writing as well as catch cheating. The longer a piece of writing is, the better the tool is at deciding whether an AI system or a human wrote something.
1. Who are more likely to use AI Text Classifier?| A．Students. | B．Teachers. | C．Parents. | D．Writers. |
| A．Positive. | B．Unconcerned | C．Cautious | D．Satisfied |
| A．It costs the users a lot of money. | B．It often makes wrong decisions. |
| C．They can’t use it as a teaching tool. | D．Students will take advantage of it to cheat. |
| A．Every coin has its two sides. | B．Rome was not built in one day. |
| C．A good beginning is half done. | D．A bit is better than nothing. |
【推荐3】Artificial intelligence has become increasingly common in recent years, appearing in various apps and tools. ChatGPT is a chatbot developed by Open AI and designed to converse (对话) with people, generate text and answer complicated questions. The name ChatGPT stands for “Generative Pre-trained Transformer”, which indicates its ability to use pre-training models to examine the connections between all elements of a data sequence(序列), that is, using a model from one machine learning assignment to train another model, much similar to how people use previously learned information when learning something new. ChatGPT offers a substantial amount of text to use for pre-training.
ChatGPT was launched in November 2022, and the developer trained it to respond to follow-up questions, challenge incorrectness and admit mistakes. ChatGPT is also a generative AI tool that can create various types of content, including short stories, doctorate theses (论文), term papers, menus and more.
ChatGPT makes it easier and faster for bloggers or content creators to produce high-quality text. It can answer complicated questions conversationally, using innovative technology to learn what humans mean when asking questions. Many people are impressed with its human-like responses, making it an efficient tool for generating written content.
ChatGPT excels at language and information tasks. It has some restrictions built in that prevent it from providing toxic reactions that are against the right values. It’s also designed to ignore improper requests. While the program provided pretty decent responses to intellectual questions, it cannot provide definitive answers to spiritual questions. Its answers are not always accurate, as it is trained to give human-feeling responses rather than necessarily being correct.
Though AI tools can assist and enhance our abilities, we must avoid becoming too dependent on them, as this dependence can cost us our thinking abilities, critical skills and intellectual curiosity, which are vitally important for lifelong learning and growth. Thus, despite many advantages of ChatGPT, we must use it wisely to avoid losing crucial skills and cognitive abilities.
1. What is ChatGPT?| A．An AI tool designed for text editing. |
| B．A chatbot that can replace human brain. |
| C．A program generating human-like responses. |
| D．A pre-trained model focused on language learning. |
| A．Beneficial. | B．Complicated. | C．Harmful. | D．Precise. |
| A．It cannot respond rapidly enough. |
| B．The inbuilt restrictions may misguide users. |
| C．It fails to provide convincing academic replies. |
| D．Overreliance on it may weaken some essential human abilities. |
| A．A news report. | B．A sci-tech magazine. |
| C．An academic paper. | D．A research document. |
