Exercise 2. Create a title for each passage and fill in the table.
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Exercise 3. Answer the questions to the text.
1. What robots do we call robonauts?
2. When did the work on the first Robonaut begin?
3. Why is automation good for us?
4. What is hydraulic power?
5. What is the difference between cyborg and android?
6. What does the theory of technological singularity say?
7. What might lead to huge improvements in science and medicine?
Text 2
Exercise 1. Read the text.
Idiotic inventions ... and products we could live without
1. In 1937 the aptly named Constance Honey of Chelsea, London patented a chocolate spoon for giving medicine to reluctant children. Basically, her idea failed because it was too popular. She would tell her young relatives: "I'd give you your medicine, but I haven't a spoon left in the house".
2. "It is well known that cooling the top of the head will have a cooling effect on the entire person", stated Chicago's Harold W. Dahly in his 1967 patent for solar-cooled headgear. Unfortunately, any benefits of the hat, which operated by means of a solar-powered fan inside the top, were outweighed by the fact that it made the wearer look totally ridiculous.
3. This hygienic item was designed in 1959 by Milwaukee inventor Bertha Dlugi in response to what she obviously thought was a problem: Pet birds were often allowed to fly through an owner's house, yet "These birds cannot normally be house-trained as other pets are, and their excremental discharge is frequently deposited on household furnishings when they are at liberty, creating an unsanitary condition". The answer to this? The bird diaper, a triangular patch of material attached to a harness that you can put around your pet parakeet.
4. In 1919 John Humphrey of Connecticut invented an unusual alarm clock, one which would rouse a sleeper from his slumbers by hitting him. The apparatus consisted of a timepiece attached to an adjustable rod with a rubber ball on the end. When the alarm on the dock went off, instead of a bell ringing, the rod would be activated, causing the ball to hit the desired area of the sleeper's anatomy. Humphrey deemed his device to be of great benefit to people who might be upset by bells ... but presumably not by being whacked over the head with a ball.
5. To reduce pedestrian casualties in 1960, David Gutman from Philadelphia came up with a special bumper designed to be fixed to the front of a car. Not only would it cushion the impact, but it also had a huge pair of claws which would grab the pedestrian around the waist to prevent him dropping to the street.
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6. This bra was created to honour Mozart on the two hundredth anniversary of his death and was manufactured by Japanese lingerie maker Triumph International. The bra contains a memory chip that plays a twenty second selection of Mozart's musical works and also has lights that flash in time as the music plays. One drawback: the bra isn't washable, so it's not for everyday wear.
7. Do you ever worry about Fido's eyesight? This invention, patented by a French optician in 1975, is the answer. The inventor developed them after she made sunglasses for her own dog. Just like glasses for people, they can be adjusted to different visual deficiencies – there are corrective lenses for myopic dogs; glasses for dogs recuperating from cataracts; even protective ones against wind and dust for dogs who hang their heads out of car windows.
8. British housewife Sarah Fox found bath times a nightmare with four small children. The bars of soap turned gooey as they slipped underwater and then the youngsters slipped on them when standing to get out. So Sarah set out to make a floating soap. Early attempts – including inserting a table-tennis ball inside a soap bar – sank without trace, but then she hit on a buoyancy technique. This involved grating soap, microwaving it and finally putting it through a food processor. Sarah and her husband ploughed cash into marketing attempts, but shops showed no interest and the big soap companies did not even reply to her letters; in 1992 she was forced to abandon the project.
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