STARTER. WORD'S WORTH Robot really means a workman, not a mechanical monster It s one of the very few Slav words (in this case Czech) borrowed in the English language. It comes from the Old Slav word robu, which means a servant. In modern Slav, the word robotnik means workman and is linked to the Russian word for work, robota.
Robot came into general use in English onlyeifter 1923, following the great success of a play by a Czech author Karl Capek (1890-1938). Capek's play was called 'R.U.R.' which stood for 'Rossum's Universal Robots1. It was about mechanical automatons that did the work of men, and were efficient but soulless. In the play, society exploited them, came to depend utterly on them, and was destroyed by them when they revolted. Since then, the term robot has come to mean a mechanical man, often in recognizable human form, as well as a non-human-looking machine that does work formerly only handled by men.
Since the early days of Capek's play, robot must have found its way into the dictionaries of every modern language, but in its own original language there is no sense of a mechanical man, just of an ordinary worker.
TEXT I. WHAT IS A ROBOT
Man has always been interested in devices that do things for him. He has invented the robot The need for robots in the modern world is growing daily. Robots can do many things that would be physically impossible for a man to do. Because robots are made of steel and special kinds of glass and plastic, they can operate where it is impossible for a man to work and stay alive. Furthermore, robots can be a substitute for man in routine, ordinary work, which is often very monotonous and dull. A worker soon gets tired of such work. But a robot is a robot. It is never tired, never fells ill, never has holidays or week-ends, never goes for a smoke, in fact, it never demands anything. It gives constant productivity. So robots can do things that man can do himself, but they can do them many times fester. This gives man much more time to perform other tasks. We must build more robots to do certain kinds of work. The number of robots used in any given field of human activity indicates the degree of its modernity.
Scientists and engineers must work out new systems and new models. It is a very complicated problem. To solve it, it is absolutely necessary to do research in many laboratories. Besides, they are to carry out big fundamental research in computer science. It is the computer that makes a machine a robot The computer is the robot's brain. The computer tells mechanical muscles what to do, when to do and how to do.
TEXT II WHAT ROBOTS CAN DO
The concept of a robot as a walking machine with electronics in its forehead has become old, because the functions performed by robots are so different nowadays that any sort of likeness to a
human-being turns out to be simply irrational. For example, hands - the working organs of man: why should a robot have Wo, and not three or four hands depending on the functions of the automatic device? And if the dev ice has to be a moving one, why should it have two legs? Designers ha\ e now proposed a large number of machines which are stable, manoeuvrable and can travel over all sorts of surfaces. There are some models that move above, like insects, on several pairs of legs.
Nowadays one often reads or hears of machines composing music, managing factories, diagnosing diseai-ss, giving advice to a pilot, playing chess, and doing a lot of oiher useml things. These are all robots - true friends of man. And all this reflects the progress achieved by electronics, automation and computer science in recent years.
TEXT III. WILL ROBOTS REPLACE PEOPLE AT WORK?
Some say robots create more jobs, some that they create less. Who do we agree with?
Robots are already used in many factories in Japan, the USA, Europe and elsewhere for many of the jobs traditionally done by human beings. The immediate result of using robots, therefore, is a reduction in the number of jobs that exist. However, because goods produced by robots are more reliable, there is usually an increase in the demands for such goods. This, in tum, leads to more jobs in the industries which supply the raw materials and so on used in the manufacture of the goods, and in the industries involved in die distribution and sale of the goods. Also, the manufacture repair and programming of robots is an industry in itself, providing numerous jobs. Thus, the overall effect of using robots can be to eventually expand the number of jobs available.
TEXT IV. ROBOTS - THE IDEAL WORKERS?
We have many complaints about work in factories: the work is often boring, heavy and repetitive: the operator does not have to think about the work; he gets no job satisfaction.
The answer is a robot. For many jobs a robot is much better than a human operator. He can programme a robot, i.e. give it its working instructions for various kinds of job in the certain sequence. Once a robot has been programmed it will do its job over and over again. It never gets bored; it works at a constant speed; it does not make mistakes; its work is always of the same standard; it docs not get tired; it does not go on strike; it can work for 24 hours a day without breaks for food, rest or sleep; it does not take holidays or demand higher wages.
Robots have other advantages, too. They can be designed to do almost every job. You cant change the human body, but robot's arms, for example, can be made to move in any direction. Robots can also do very heavy work and they can operate in conditions that are too dangerous, too hot or too cold for people to work in. They can work under water, in poisonous gas and in radioactive areas. And on top of all this, robots never complain.
TEXT V. THE ADVANTAGES HUMAN BEINGS HAVE OVER ROBOTS
It is obvious that robots have many advantages over human beings. However, it is also true that humans can do many things that robots can't For example, humans can carry out a task without having to be told exactly how to do it first - in other words, they don't always have to be programmed. Humans can walk, run, swim, drive cars, fly aeroplanes, and so on, but robots can do so only in a very limited way. Another advantage humans have is the way the same person can do jobs as different as making a cup of tea and designing a new type of motor car. And unlike robots, people can know whether what they are doing is good or bad, and whether it is boring or interesting. Also, robots are only just beginning to be able to understand speech and writing, but humans can communicate easily with each other by these methods, and by many others - telephone, drawings, radio, and so on - as well.
And we should not forget that robots owe their existence to humans - we make them, repair them and control them, not the other way round. Finally, humans can produce new little humans by themselves.
