15. Complete the sentences.

1. Today the students ... some facts about ... history. 2. Ancient Greeks and Romans used ... cogs and gears which are now an ... part of... .3. At the end of the 17th century engineers already knew about most of the ... that ... a modern robot. 4. Throughout history ... have ... a variety of seemingly magical ... devices. 5. These devices were simply ... a ... of operations. 7. A robot consists of a metal or plastic ... and a variety of ... provide muscle ... 8. Today's robots are sophisti­cated ... machines that have ..., microphones and specific ... that imi­tate the ... of ... .

1 6. Expand these sentences with the facts from the text.

1. The basic principles of robot technology were known thousands of years ago.

2. The Middle Ages produced advances in robot technology.

3. There were many mechanical devices in the past.

4. A modern robot is a complex engineering structure.

5. It's difficult to predict what the robots of the future will look like.

17. Write the headings above the six texts about working robots.

a) Painting.

b) Handling

c) Welding

d) Palletizing.

e) Finishing.

f) Cutting.

1 ____________ Car assembly plants have used robots for amny years as this process produces dangerous fumed and bright lights. Robot arms have to carry a weld gun that can weigh over 100kg.	4 _____________ With a six-axis robot, you can finish parts in all kinds of materials. The robot either holds the part or the tool. You can also use a multipurpose tool at the end of the robot arm.
2 __________ This was an early application of robots, a sthe process produces harmful, flammable fumes as the paint evaporates. The robots have quite thin arms as they don’t have do carry much weight.	5 ______________ Robots have the power and speed for this kind of job. They can move car parts, eggs, chocolates, bottles of drinks and loads up to 120 kg. they can perform at rates of 150 picks per minute.
3 ___________ Robots are good choice as the process can involve dangerous technologies. The robot holds either the part or the cutting tool.	6 ___________ As an example, a robot pick up bags of cement and places them on a pallet. It counts the bags and knows where the next one must be placed. Simple four- or five-axis robots can be used for palletising foods or building materials.

18. Read the text attentively to find something new about robots.

Robots in Perspective

If you think robots belong to space movies, think again. Right now, all over the world, robots are on the move. Putting chocolates into boxes, walking into live volcanoes, driving trains in Paris and defusing bombs in Northern Ireland are their common tasks. Today's robots are doing more and more things humans can't do or don't want to do. The idea of creating an intelligent machine is very old. Homer described gold girls, mechanical helpers built by Hephaistos, the Greek god of smiths. In1495, Leonardo da Vinci designed a mechanical man. But only the invention of transistors and integrated circuits in the 1950s and 1960s made real robots possible. Compact, reliable electronics and computers added brains to already existing machines. In 1959, researchers demonstrated the possibility of robotic manufacturing ashtrays.

T he Czech word 'robota', meaning hard work, was first used by the writer Karel Chapek in the story where robots are invented to help people by performing simple tasks, but being used to fight wars, they turn on their human masters and take over the world.

There's no precise definition of a robot. It is normally defined as a programmable machine imitating an intelligent creature. Getting information from its surroundings and doing something physical (moving or manipulating objects) qualify a machine as a robot.

N ame a boring or dangerous job. Somewhere, a robot is probably doing it. Robots are ideal for doing jobs that require repetitive, precise and fast movements. Robots are good at doing the same thing without asking for a safe working environment, salary, breaks, food and sleep, without getting bored or tired, without making mistakes. Factories are so highly automated that most human workers carry out only supervising and maintaining the robots.

People keep finding new uses for robots - making and packing drugs and foods, soldering tiny wires to semiconductor chips, inserting integrated circuits onto printed circuit boards used in electronics, working in radioactive "hot zones", exploring space.

All work and no play make anyone dull - even a robot. Soccer-playing robots gather each year at RoboCup, an international event collecting over 100 teams from 35 countries. Robotic players use radio signals to coordinate their actions with their teammates. Teams are placed in divisions based on size, ranging from the size of a pizza box. By 2050, the organizers of RoboCup count on developing a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can beat the human world champion team in soccer.