Robot Cars to Do Battle in Desert Race When 15 competitors lined up in Nevada last year for the US Defense Department’s first million-dollar robot race, hopes were high. The challenge: to drive a vehicle without a human driver or remote control some 150 miles (241 kilometers) through the Mojave Desert. But those hopes quickly went up in a cloud of dust as most robots barely managed to get off the starting line. The best performer, a modified Humvee built by engineers at Pennsylvania’s Carnegie Mellon University, traveled 7 miles (11 kilometers) before breaking down. To robot devotees(热爱者), however, it was a minor problem. No surprise, then, that 43 teams showed up to try out for this year’s race, dubbed(被称作) the Grand Challenge. For the past week, teams ranging from garage enthusiasts to well-funded university engineers have been fine-tuning their machines at qualifying rounds here at the California Speedway in Fontana, California. (Watch the robots in action in our exclusive video. ) Twenty-three finalists were announced Thursday for Saturday’s Grand Challenge. The 175-mile (282-kilometer) course starts and finishes in Primm, Nevada. The race promises to be even tougher than last year’s run. But 18 months is an eternity in the robotics world, and the technology has vastly improved. Organizers believe several teams have a real shot of finishing the race in less than ten hours to earn the grand prize of two million US dollars. "When the first team out of the chute (斜道)--Mojavaton, a small team out of Colorado--made it successfully around the 2.2-mile (3.5-kilometer) qualification course, I "knew right there and then that we had something special," said Ron Kurjanowicz, the chief of staff for the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is sponsoring the race. Unknown Course The aim of the Grand Challenge, Defense Department officials say, is to spur development of autonomous ground vehicles that can operate in dangerous environments, such as war zones, keeping soldiers out of harm’s way. A US Congress mandate(训令) requires that one-third of military ground vehicles drive themselves by 2015, but the technology to meet that mandate does not yet exist. So the government looked to enterprising teams to develop the technology for driverless vehicles, sweetening its offer with the two-million-dollar purse. None of the 23 teams knows what lies ahead for this year’s race. DARPA won’t reveal the exact route until two hours before the start of the race on Saturday. But the obstacles on the Fontana qualification course--including a steel-enforced tunnel that wipes out a vehicle’s global positioning system--are made to resemble the rugged, real-life conditions that the vehicles will have to navigate. The vehicles use sensors such as lasers, cameras, and radar to help them avoid obstacles such as rocks and cliffs. The computer’s brain has to figure out how to resolve unexpected conflicts, like a boulder sitting in the middle of the road. "Think about all the decisions that you and I have to make when we drive from our house to the store," Kurjanowicz said. "These vehicles have to do the same thing, without a driver. " Among the top contenders in Saturday’s race is TerraMax, a massive truck originally built by the Wisconsin-based Oshkosh Truck Corporation for the US Marine corps. In last year’s race, TerraMax managed to go only 1.2 miles (2 kilometers). Team leader Gary Schmiedel expects to do much better this year. He pointed to the new all-wheel steering feature on the truck as an important addition. "We can move this large, 15-ton (13. 5-metric ton) payload vehicle in a turn that’s equivalent to that of a Humvee," he said. Ghostrider The resources of teams like Terra Max or Carnegie Mellon University, which has two vehicles in the race this year, are a far cry from those of some of the other competitors, including inventors, electricians, and even a high school team. One entry, from a Southern California team of engineers, racers, and hot-rodders, is called It Came from the Garage. It has a beer keg(小桶) stuck on the back and an on-off switch that says "brain". "Most of the schools and organizations we’re up against are just accessorizing conventional vehicles," said team leader Chris "C. J. " Pedersen, a former actor. "Ours is a custom-built, 21st-century hot rod complete with hood scoop and exhaust coming off the side. " Anthony Levandowski, a robotics builder from Berkeley, California, is back with Ghostrider, the only motorcycle robot in the qualifications. Studded with sensors and computers, it toppled(翻倒) over after 3 feet (1 meter) in last year’s race. Levandowski, who had to postpone his graduate studies when he couldn’t find a faculty advisor who believed it would be possible to build the motorcycle robot, says his vehicle has some distinct advantages. "We’re smaller and go a lot more places," he said while tinkering with the robot before another trial run. "We’re also a lot less expensive. This bike costs as much as a tire or a wheel of some of these other guys’ machines. " Smart Money Neither Ghostrider nor It Came from the Garage made the final cut at this week’s qualifying races. However, another crowd-pleaser, Cajunbot--or the Ragin’s Cajun--a converted all-terrain vehicle developed by a team from the University of Louisiana in Lafayette, did. Thesmart money in Saturday’s race may be on Stanley, a converted Volkswagen Touareg made by a team at California’s Stanford University. It was the only vehicle that didn’t hit an obstacle in the trial runs. Even if none of the vehicles finishes the race this year, DARPA’s Kurjanowicz said, the event has succeeded in galvanizing robotics developers and pushing the creation of new technologies. "The beauty of the Grand Challenge is that it doesn’t tell people how to solve the problem," he said. "The community has come up with its own elegant solutions. \ The only vehicle that didn’t hit an obstacle in the trial runs is______
Part A You will hear 10 short dialogues. For each dialogue, there is one question and four possible answers. Choose the correct answer -- [A], [B], [C] or [D], and mark it in your test booklet. You will have 15 seconds to answer the question and you will hear each dialogue ONLY ONCE. At what time did the basketball match start last Saturday
At 8:45.
B. At 9:15.
C. At 8:15.
D. At 9:45.
When one looks back upon the fifteen hundred years that are the life span of the English language, he should be able to notice a number of significant truths. The history of our language has always been a history of constant change--at times a slow, almost imperceptible change, at other times a violent collision between two languages. Our language has always been a living growing organism, it has never been static. Another significant truth that emerges from such a study is that language at all times has been the possession not of one class or group but of many. At one extreme it h been the property of the common, ignorant folk, who have used it in the daily business of their living, much as they have used their animals or the kitchen pots and pans. At the other extreme it has been the treasure of those who have respected it as an instrument and a sign of civilization, and who have struggled by writing it down to give it some permanence, order, dignity, and if possible, a little beauty. As we consider our changing language, we should note here two developments that are of special and immediate importance to us. One is that since the time of the Anglo-Saxons there has been an almost complete reversal of the different devices for showing the relationship of words in a sentence. Anglo-Saxon ( old English) was a language of many inflections. Modern English has few inflections. We must now depend largely on word order and function words to convey the meanings that the older language did by means of changes in the forms of words. Function words, you should understand, are words such as prepositions, conjunctions, and a few others that are used primarily to show relationships among other words. A few inflections, however, have survived. And when some word inflections come into conflict with word order, there may be trouble for the users of the language, as we shall see later when we turn our attention to such words as WHO or WHOM and ME or I. The second fact we must consider is that as language itself changes, our attitudes toward language forms change also. The eighteenth century, for example, produced from various sources a tendency to fix the language into patterns not always set in and grew, until at the present time there is a strong tendency to restudy and re-evaluate language practices in terms of the ways in which people speak and write. In contrast to the earlier linguists, modem linguists tend to ______
A. attempt to continue the standardization of the language
B. evaluate language practices in terms of current speech rather than standards or proper patterns
C. be more concerned about the improvement of the language than its analysis or history
D. be more aware of the rules of the language usage