大學(xué)英語綜合教程第四冊 7

[00:00.00] Smart cars that can see,hear,feel,smell,and talk?And drive on their own? [00:10.71]This may sound like a dream,but the computer revolution is set to turn it into a reality. [00:18.81]SMART CARS by Michio Kaku [00:23.25]Even the automobile industry,which has remained largely unchanged for the last seventy years, [00:30.54]is about to feel the effects of the computer revolution. [00:35.16]The automobile industry ranks as among the most lucrative and powerful industries of the twentieth century. [00:42.89]There are presently 500 million cars on earth,or one car for every ten people.Sales of the automobile industry [00:52.53]stand at about a trillion dollars,making it the world's biggest manufacturing industry. [00:59.66]The car,and the roads it travels on,will be revolutionized in the twenty-first century. [01:06.95]The key to tomorrow's"smart cars"will be sensors."We'll see vehicles and roads that see and hear and feel and [01:16.35]smell and talk and act,"predicts Bill Spreitzer,technical director of General Motors Corporation's ITS program, [01:25.49]which is designing the smart car and road of the future. [01:30.17]Approximately40,000people are killed each year in the United States in traffic accidents.The number of people [01:39.00]that are killed or badly injured in car accidents is so vast that we don't even bother to mention them [01:46.55]in the newspapers anymore.Fully half of these fatalities come from drunk drivers,and many others from carelessness. [01:55.84]A smart cat could eliminate most of these car accidents.It can sense if a driver is drunk via electronic sensors [02:06.06]that can pick up alcohol vapor in the air,and refuse to start up the engine. [02:11.65]The car could also alert the police and provide its precise location if it is stolen. [02:18.28]Smart cars have already been built which can monitor one's driving and the driving conditions nearby. [02:25.60]Small radars hidden in the bumpers can scan for nearby cars.Should you make a serious driving mistake [02:35.13](e.g.,change lanes when where is a car in your"blind spot")the computer would sound an immediate warning. [02:43.05]At the MIT Media Lab,a prototype is already being built which will determine how sleepy you are as you drive, [02:51.88]which is especially important for long-distance truck drivers.The monotonous,almost hypnotic process of [03:00.37]staring at the center divider for long hours is a grossly underestimated,life-threatening hazard. [03:08.20]To eliminate this,a tiny camera hidden in the dashboard can be trained on a driver's face and eyes. [03:16.38]If the driver's eyelids close for a certain length of time [03:21.45]and his or her driving becomes erratic,a computer in the dashboard could alert the driver. [03:28.21]Two of the most frustrating things about driving a car are getting lost and getting stuck intraffic. [03:35.71]While the computer revolution is unlikely to cure these problems,it will have a positive impact. [03:42.92]Sensors in your car tuned to radio signals from orbiting satellites can locate your car precisely at [03:50.60]any moment and warn of traffic jams.We already have twenty-four Navstar satellites orbiting the earth, [04:00.08]making up what is called the Global Positioning System. [04:04.63]They make it possible to determine your location on the earth to within about a hundred feet.At any given time, [04:13.75]there are severalGPS satellites orbiting overhead at a distance of about11,000miles.Each satellite contains four atomic clocks [04:25.37]which vibrate at a precise frequency,according to the laws of the quantum theory. [04:31.85]As a satellite passes overhead,it sends out a radio signal that can be detected by a receiver in car's computer. [04:41.04]The car's computer can then calculate how far the satellite is by measuring how long it took for the signal to arrive. [04:49.61]Since the speed of light is well known,any delay in receiving the satellite's signal can be converted into a distance. [04:58.15]In Japan there are already over a million cars with some type of navigational capability. [05:05.57](some of them locate a car's position by correlating the rotations in the steering wheel to its position on a map.) [05:13.51]With the price of microchips dropping so drastically,future applications of GPS are virtually limitless. [05:21.98]"The commercial industry is poised to explode,"says Randy Hoffman of Magellan Systems Corp., [05:30.36]which manufactures navigational systems.Blind individuals could use GPS sensors in walking sticks, [05:39.14]airplanes could land by remote control, [05:43.29]hikers will be able to locate their position in the woods-the list of potential uses is endless. [05:50.66]GPS is actually but part of a larger movement,called "telematics," [05:55.96]which will eventually attempt to put smart cars on smart highways.Proto-types of such highways already exist in Europe, [06:05.94]and experiments are being made in California to mount computer chips,sensors, [06:12.63]and radio transmitters on highways to alert cars to traffic jams and obstructions. [06:19.84]On an eight-mile stretch of Interstate 15 ten miles north of San Diego, [06:25.90]traffic engineers are installing an MIT-designed system which will introduce the "automated driver." [06:34.21]The plan calls for computers,aided by thousands of three-inch magnetic spikes buried in the highway, [06:41.62]to take complete control of the driving of cars on heavily trafficked roads. [06:48.65]Cars will be bunched into groups often to twelve vehicles,only six feet apart,traveling in unison,and controlled by computer. [06:58.13]Promoters of this computerized highway have great hopes for its future.By 2010, [07:06.96]telematics may well be incorporated into one of the major highways in the United States.If successful,by2020, [07:16.79]as the price of microchips drops to below a penny a piece, [07:22.01]telematics could be adopted in thousands of miles of highways in the United States. [07:27.70]This could prove to be an environmental boon as well,saving fuel,reducing traffic jams,decreasing air pollution, [07:36.95]and serving as an alternative to highway expansion. 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