Question

    A team of engineers at Harvard University has been inspired by Nature to create the first robotic fly. The mechanical fly has become a platform for a series of new high-tech integrated systems. Designed to do what a fly does naturally, the tiny machine is the size of a fat housefly. Its mini wings allow it to stay in the air and perform controlled flight tasks.

“It’s extremely important for us to think about this as a whole system and not just the sum of a bunch of individual components,” said Robert Wood, the Harvard engineering professor who has been working on the robotic fly project for over a decade. A few years ago, his team got the go-ahead to start piecing together the components. “The added difficulty with a project like this is that actually none of those components are off the shelf and so we have to develop them all on our own,” he said.

They engineered a series of systems to start and drive the robotic fly. “The seemingly simple system which just moves the wings has a number of interdependencies on the individual components, each of which individually has to perform well, but then has to be matched well to everything it’s connected to,” said Wood. The flight device was built into a set of power, computation, sensing and control systems. Wood says the success of the project proves that the flying robot with these tiny components can be built and manufactured.

While this first robotic fly is linked to a small, off-board power source, the goal is eventually to equip it with a built-in power source, so that it might someday perform data-gathering work at rescue sites, in farmers’ fields or on the battlefield. “Basically, it should be able to take off, land and fly around,” he said.

Wood says the design offers a new way to study flight mechanics and control at insect-scale. Yet, the power, sensing and computation technologies on board could have much broader applications. “You can start thinking about using them to answer open scientific questions, you know, to study biology in ways that would be difficult with the animals, but using these robots instead,” he said. “So there are a lot of technologies and open interesting scientific questions that are really what drives us on a day to day basis.”

1.Which of the following statements was the difficulty engineers met while making the robotic fly?

A.They did not have sufficient fund.

B.No ready-made components were available.

C.There was no model in their mind.

D.It was hard for them to assemble the components.

2.What do we know about the robotic fly?

A.The robotic fly has been put into wide application.

B.The robotic fly consists of a flight device and a control system.

C.The robotic fly can collect information from many sources.

D.The robotic fly can fly well with the cooperation of individual components.

3.Which of the following can be learned from the passage?

A.The robotic fly can replace animals in some experiments.

B.Animals are not allowed in biological experiments.

C.The robotic fly is designed to learn about insects.

D.There used to be few ways to study how insects fly.

4.Which of the following might be the best title of the passage?

A.The Development of Robotic Fly

B.Robotic Fly Promotes Engineering Science

C.Harvard’s Efforts in Making Robotic Fly

D.Robotic Fly Imitates Real Life Insect

Answer

1.B

2.D

3.A

4.D

【解析】

这是一篇说明文。主要说明了哈佛大学的一组工程师受到大自然的启发，创造了第一只机器苍蝇。文章还说明了设计这种机械苍蝇遇到的困难和该飞行装置的应用区域，这种设计为研究飞行力学和昆虫控制提供了一种新方法。

1.

细节理解题。根据第二段中““The added difficulty with a project like this is that actually none of those components are off the shelf and so we have to develop them all on our own,” he said.”他说：“像这样的项目还有一个额外的困难，那就是这些组件都不是现成的，所以我们必须自己开发。”可知工程师们在让机器人飞行时遇到的困难是没有现成的组件。故选B项。

2.

推理判断题。根据第三段中“each of which individually has to perform well, but then has to be matched well to everything it’s connected to.(每一个单独的必须表现良好，然后必须很好地匹配它所连接的一切。)”可推知机器苍蝇需要各部分协作发挥作用。故选D项。

3.

细节理解题。根据最后一段中“You can start thinking about using them to answer open scientific questions, you know, to study biology in ways that would be difficult with the animals, but using these robots instead”(你可以开始考虑用它们来回答开放式的科学问题，你知道，用动物很难做到的方式来研究生物学，但可以用这些机器人来代替)可知伍德的设计可以在某些实验中代替动物。故选A项。

4.

主旨大意题。根据第一段中“A team of engineers at Harvard University has been inspired by Nature to create the first robotic fly. The mechanical fly has become a platform for a series of new high-tech integrated systems. Designed to do what a fly does naturally, the tiny machine is the size of a fat housefly.”可知， 哈佛大学的一组工程师受到大自然的启发，创造了第一只机器苍蝇。机械苍蝇已经成为一系列高新技术集成系统的平台。这台小型机器的设计初衷是让苍蝇能很自然地做它们该做的事情，但它的体积只有一只家蝇那么大。以及文章主要内容围绕着机械苍蝇能够模仿真实的昆虫来进行数据收集工作，故选D项。