10. Прочитайте текст и перведите его на русский язык.

Shake Hands with a Robot

Shake hands with Vorscht - that's what engineers at University in Edinburgh are saying. Recently they have devised this brand new robot. Vorscht's hand-shake is not the metallic, jaw-like clamp of the robots that are used on production lines in industry. It's asofter, gentler grasp, like gripping the trunk of an elephant, or even shaking hands with another person.

Take a rigid plastic tube, rather like a vacuum cleaner hose. Close one end, and blow air in the other. The tube stretches slightly. The increased pressure inside the tube causes it to extend. Take three of these tubes and mount them side by side to form an assembly called an actuator. Increase the pressure in two of the tubes, and the actuator bends. Reduce the pressure and it straightens up again. That's how the fingers on Vorscht's hands bend when they grip your hand.

An individual element is a plastic tube with ridged sides, like bellows. Increasing the pressure inside the tube causes it to extend. The sides of the tube are like a spring – reduce the pressure and it springs back to its original length. This occurs because of the elasticity of the material, like that of an elastic band.

With two elements, the actuator can move from side to side. Greater pressure in element 1 makes it bend to the right. This is called bending in a plane.

With three elements, the actuator can be made to bend in any direction. The greater the differences in pressure, the more the tip of the actuator is deflected.

11. Верны или нет данные утверждения?

1. Vorscht is the name of the company that produces robots.

2. The ridged plastic tubes that the robot consists of look like a vacuum cleaner hose.

3. When you increase pressure inside a ridged tube the tube springs back to its origi-nal length.

4. The tubes are made of elastic material.

5. When an actuator consists of three tubes it can't bend in any direction.

12. Прочитайте текст и перведите его на русский язык.

Man-made Man

In the past few years, we have seen important advances in computer science, biomechanics and material science, which have caused great changes in robot engineering.

Today a robot is not just a metal structure. It is already capable of expressing different emotions and imitating simple operations. Engineers and scientists have written a lot of complicated programmes for robots but it is still very difficult to make a thinking machine. Chess, for example, involves a great deal of human brainpower, but for robots playing chess is a simpler task than, say, making soup. A chess player needs only information and logic but what about making soup? You cut some vegetables, boil some bones, add some spices. But what vegetables and how many? How to distinguish potatoes from chicken? And, by the way, whose bones to put? And how can a robot possibly add salt with no sense of what "saltness" means?

So you see that in order to have human-like machines that will work in real-world situations scientists still have a lot of work to do.

UNIT 5 AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING

SECTION A. SOME CAR SYSTEMS

Grammar: Present Simple Passive

1. Преобразуйте по образцу предложения в Present Simple Passive. Переведите на русский язык.

EXAMPLE: We obtain petrol from petroleum.

Petrol is obtained from petroleum.

1. The engine produces power.

2. We usually use oil in different branches of industry.

3. The engineer controls the fuel systems.

4. Nowadays they make pistons from plastics.