For Dr Cynthia Breazeal,it's just about time to celebrate. The robotics researcher and professor was just getting ready to throw a party when The Huffington Post spoke with her yesterday,only hours after she and her team attracted international attention with the first appearance of Jibo,the world's first family robot.

Jibo,which stands just under a foot tall,can see,hear,speak,learn,help and relate. It can take pictures,track faces,recognize where sound is coming from and—ideally―help organize and simplify your life.

  On Wednesday,Jibo began its crowdfunding (民间集资) campaign on Indie-gogo. The bot is selling for $ 499 to consumers and $ 599 to developers. Accord?ing to Breazeal,the crowdfunding approach is their way of getting feedback on the prototype (模型) from the most interested community of bot-enthusiasts out there.

  The bot has a creative design that gives it something between a human and desk lamp appearance. Its midsection and "head" can turn,which helps it show tHe difference between "awake" and "asleep". Even in its prototype stage,Jibo dances? introduces itself,listens to voice commands and displays images on its 5. 7 inch touchscreen LCD display.

  "For a social robot it brings together a set of expertise that is not typical?" Breazeal said. Jibo is able to look around the room and change the focus of your camera. Breazeal plans to incorporate Bluetooth and a cloud-based update system― both things that didn't exist just a decade ago.

  When you take Jibo home,it will guide you through connecting to a Wi-Fi net?work and will take specific steps to learn more about you. The first thing it does is register your face and voice,asking you a few questions and explaining how it can help you.

5. We can infer from the first paragraph that      .

   A. Breazeal was trying to sell Jibo

   B. Jibo still needed further improvement

   C. Breazeal needed money to create Jibo

   D. The invention of Jibo was worth celebrating

6. Why did Breazeal hold the crowdfunding campaign?

   A. To attract robot enthusiasts.

   B. To raise money for her projects.

   C. To make her invention known.

   D. To know what people think of her invention.

7. When you bring Jibo home,you should first      .

   A. take steps to know it   B. connect it to the Internet

   C. ask it a few questions   D. introduce yourself to it

8. What is the text mainly about?

   A. The world's first family robot.

   B. A crowdfunding campaign.

   C. Dr Cynthia Breazeal's celebration.

   D. The recent development in robotics.

  Scientists have created a way to control a robot with signals from a human brain.

By generating the proper brainwaves―picked up by a cap with e-lectrodes (电极) that sense the signals and reflect a person's instruc?tions―scientists can instruct a humanoid robot to move to specific locations and pick up certain objects.

  The commands are limited to moving forward,picking up one of two objects and bringing it to one of two locations. The researchers have achieved 94 per cent of accuracy between the thought commands and the robot's movements.

  "This is really a proof-of-concept demonstration,"said Rajesh Rao,a researcher from the University of Washington who leads the project. "It suggests that one day we might be able to use semi-autonomous robots for such jobs as helping disabled peo?ple or performing routine tasks in a person's home.” The person wearing the electrode cap watches the robot's movement on a com?puter screen through two cameras installed on and above the robot.

  When the robot's cameras see the objects that are to be picked up,they pass on the information to the user's computer screen. Each object lights up randomly on the computer screen. When a person wants something to be picked up and i[ hap?pens to light up,the brain registers surprise and sends this brain activity to the com?puter and then to the robot. The robot then proceeds to pick up the object.

  A similar programme is used to decide where the robot will go.

  "One of the important things about this demonstration is that we're using a 'noisy' brain signal to control the robot, "Rao said. "That means we can only obtain brain signals indirectly from sensors on the surface of the head,and not where they are generated deep in the brain. As a result,the user can only generate high-level commands such as indicating which object to pick up or which location to go to,and the robot needs to be autonomous enough to be able to execute such commands.” In the future,the researchers hope to make the robot more adaptive to the en?vironment by having them carry out more complex commands.

1. What is special about the robot introduced in the passage?

   A. It is controlled by human thoughts.

   B. It can be made humanoid,

   C. It can be used to help the disabled.

   D. It has high intelligence itself.

2. Which of the following is TRUE about the robot?

   A. It can move forward and backward and pick up two objects at the same time.

   B. It can move forward,pick up both objects and bring them to either location.

   C. It can only move forward,pick up one object and put it in one location.

   D. It can read all human thoughts and do as instructed.

3. What Rao says in the eighth paragraph suggests that the new robot      .

   A. is still at its early stage of development

   B. will be widely used in our daily routines soon

   C. is autonomous enough to complete complex commands

   D. is only limited to doing routine work at home

4. The sixth paragraph mainly describes         .

   A. how the robot controls a person's action

   B. how the robot picks up the right object

   C. how the person controls the robot

   D. how the robot finds out where to go

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