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Twendy-one: A Robot for Your Home

保姆机器人

修长的胳膊、蓝色的眼睛加上一张扁平的大脸庞，机器人Twendy-one与电影中的外星人形象颇有几分神似。这个历时近七年，耗资数百万美元打造而成的机器人除了外形拉风，做起家务来更是一把好手，它浑身布满传感器，动作十分灵活，不仅能为主人烤面包，端早餐，还是老年人或行动不便的人的好帮手。

A futuristic robot designed to help care for the ageing population was recently unveiled in Japan.

Twendy-one, as he or she is called, has a light touch and a soft grip with movements that respond to human touch. But don’t be fooled—he has enough strength to support a man to sit or stand. At the same time he can pick up a loaf of bread without crushing it and serve toast without showering the kitchen in crumbs.

“It’s the first robot in the world with this much system integration,” said Shigeki Sugano, professor of mechanical engineering at Waseda University, who led the Twendy-One project.

The project team have managed to balance strength and flexibility—but it has taken almost seven years and cost millions of pounds to assemble the 241 pressure-sensors in each silicon-wrapped “hand” and the ability to speak. In order for the robot to safely co-exist with humans, researchers have equipped it with a large number of touch and force feedback sensors allowing to detect and react to collisions in order to prevent injuries. The researchers demonstrated the robot helping an elderly person get out of bed and preparing breakfast with him.

Twendy-one is 3ft 8ins tall with long arms and a face that puts you in mind of E.T. from the sci-fi movie of the same name. The name represents a 21st-century version of Wendy, an earlier model.

The Twendy-One robot team wants to commercialize their creation by 2015 which would be plenty of time for them to work out many details that would allow the robot to operate in more complex and unconstrained situations.

Vocabulary

futuristic 未来（主义）的，极其先进的

unveiled 揭幕，向公众展示

grip 紧握（或抓牢）的方式

a loaf of 长方形的一大块

toast 烤面包片，吐司

crumb 碎屑，面包屑

integration 集成，综合，整体

flexibility 灵活性

assemble 装配，组装

pressure-sensor 压力传感器

silicon-wrapped 硅包裹的

feedback sensor 反应传感器

collision 碰撞

sci-fi movie 科幻电影

commercialize 使商业化，使……作为商品出售

unconstrained 不受约束的

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Philips Food Printer

飞利浦食物打印机

胡萝卜可以变成意大利面，西兰花能变身为糖果或冰激凌？没错！飞利浦的概念食物打印机能让这些听上去异想天开的主意统统变成现实。这款打印机运用分子烹饪学的原理将食物进行解构，再用3D打印的技术将食物重组成你想要的形状。快来看看这款神奇的食物打印机吧！

Already for thousands of years people have been food designers. How will food technology develop itself into the 21th century? The Philips investigate how we will eat and source our food in the future, like in 15 to 20 years. One of such products that we might have in our home is this Philips Food Printer.

Molecular gastronomy approaches cooking from a scientific point of view. It studies the physical and chemical processes that occur during the cooking process and tries to understand and explain the transformation that takes place within the ingredients. Everyone who has cooked an egg before knows how different cooking times and temperatures will effect your egg, right? Molecular gastronomists who have a better understanding of these processes can use this knowledge to deconstruct food and reassemble them in bizarre new forms and shapes.

For example carrot could be served as foam or parmesan cheese as a strand of spaghetti! So if the kids don’t want to eat broccoli or brussels sprouts, how about shaping them as candy or ice-cream?

Combine this knowledge with the technology of a 3D printer and you have food printer which could print food in any shape by your own design. This would offer endless new possibilities to present food. A nice extra feature is that this printer would even allow you to adjust the nutritional value of the food that is being printed, perfect to keep a balanced diet.

Vocabulary

a strand of 一串（缕、股）

bizarre 奇形怪状的，异乎寻常的

broccoli 西兰花，花椰菜

brussels sprouts 汤菜，球芽甘蓝（或其小而可食的球状芽）

carrot 胡萝卜

deconstruct 解构，拆分

foam 泡沫

ingredient 成分

Molecular gastronomy 分子烹饪法（美食学）

nutritional value 营养价值

parmesan cheese 帕尔马干酪（一种用脱脂乳制成的意大利硬干酪）

reassemble 重新集合

spaghetti 意大利面

transformation 变化，转换，转变

（来源：英语学习杂志）