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Earthquake survivors trapped in rubble could one day be saved by an unlikely rescuer: A robotic caterpillar that burrows its way

admin2014-01-27  61
问题     Earthquake survivors trapped in rubble could one day be saved by an unlikely rescuer: A robotic caterpillar that burrows its way through debris. Just a few centimeters wide, the robot relies on magnetic fields to propel it through the kind of tiny crevices that would foil the wheeled or tracked search robots currently used to locate people trapped in collapsed buildings.
    The caterpillar’ s inventor, Norihiko Saga of Akita Prefectural University in Japan, will demonstrate his new method of locomotion at a conference on magnetic materials in Seattle. In addition to lights and cameras, a search caterpillar could be equipped with an array of sensors to measure other factors—such as radioactivity or oxygen levels—that could tell human rescuers if an area is safe to enter.
    The magnetic caterpillar is amazingly simple. It moves by a process similar to peristalsis, the rhythmic contraction that moves food down your intestine. Saga made the caterpillar from a series of rubber capsules filled with a magnetic fluid consisting of iron particles, water, and a detergent-like surfactant, which reduces the surface tension of the fluid. Each capsule is linked to the next by a pair of rubber rods. The caterpillar’ s guts are wrapped in a clear, flexible polymer tube that protects it from the environment.
    To make the caterpillar move forwards, Saga moves a magnetic field backwards along the caterpillar. Inside the caterpillar’s "head" capsule, magnetic fluid surges towards the attractive magnetic field, causing the capsule to bulge out to the sides and draw its front and rear portions up. As the magnetic field passes to the next capsule, the first breaks free and springs forward and the next capsule bunches up. In this way, the caterpillar can reach speeds of 4 centimeters per second as it crawls along.
    Moving the magnetic field faster can make it traverse the caterpillar before all the capsules have sprung back to their original shapes. The segments then all spring back, almost but not quite simultaneously.
    Saga plans to automate the movement of the caterpillar by placing electromagnets at regular intervals along the inside of its polymer tube. By phasing the current flow to the electromagnets, he’ 11 be able to control it wirelessly via remote control. He also needs to find a new type of rubber for the magnetic capsules, because the one he’ s using at the minute eventually begins to leak.
    But crawling is not the most efficient form of locomotion for robots, says Robert Full of the University of California at Berkeley, an expert in animal motion who occasionally advises robotics designers. "If you look at the energetic cost of crawling, compared to walking, swimming or flying, crawling is very expensive, " he says. Walking, on the other every step, energy is conserved in the foot and then released to help the foot spring up.
    Saga acknowledges this inefficiency but says his caterpillar is far more stable than one that walks, rolls on wheels or flies. It has no moving parts save for a few fluid-filled rubber capsules. Biped robots and wheeled robots require a smooth surface and are difficult to miniaturize, and flying robots have too many moving parts. "My peristaltic crawling robot is simple and it works, " he says.
The meaning of the word "peristalsis" in Paragraph 3 is similar to______.
选项 A、swimming
B、flying
C、crawling
D、walking
答案C
解析 根据第三段的“the rhythmic contraction that moves fooddown your intestine”可以推断出peristalsis就相当于crawling，意思是“有节奏的蠕动”。故应选C。
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