A robot is a special kind of machine. It is a machine that can follow instructions. ____ it is a machine, it seldom makes mistakes or gets tired. And it ____ complains, unless you tell it to!

Robots are around us. Some robots are used to ___ things. For example, robots can help make cars. Some robots are used to explore dangerous places. Some robots can help clean your house. Some robots can even _____ human languages. They can be used to help answer telephone calls. Some robots look like _______, but most robots do not. They just look like machines.

Long ago, people imagined ______. Over 2,000 years ago, Homer, a famous poet, imagined robots. His robots were made of gold, but they were not____. Nobody was able to make a real robot at that time. The ______ real robot was made in 1959.

In the future, we will have even more robots. They will do things that we can’t do, or that we don’t want to do, or that are too _____ for us. For example, robots will help us fight fires and illnesses. They will help make our life _______.

In your schoolbags, you may have a pencil, some kinds of pens, a ruler and some books. None of these things grow in the fields. They were all made in factories. And, of course, they were invented by some people. There have not always been pencils or pens, a ruler and books. Thousands of years ago no one knew about these things.

Who invented them first? How did they have such clever ideas? We always don’t know. There have been thousands of inventions, large and small, in the human history. Some of these inventions have changed the world, such as paper, printing, radio, telephone and computer, and we know the inventors. But we have forgotten most of the other inventors.

Who invented the clock, for example, or the lock to the door? We don’t know. There have been thousands of inventors and we should be grateful（感激的）to them for their clever ideas. Will you be one of them when you grow up?