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  3. Swimmers can drown in busy swimming pools when lifeguards fail to notice that they are in trouble. The Royal Society for the Pre

Swimmers can drown in busy swimming pools when lifeguards fail to notice that they are in trouble. The Royal Society for the Pre

admin2013-01-18  31
问题     Swimmers can drown in busy swimming pools when lifeguards fail to notice that they are in trouble. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents says that on average 15 people drown in British pools each year, but many more suffer major injury after getting into difficulties. Now a French company has developed an artificial intelligence system called Poseidon that sounds the alarm when it sees someone in danger of drowning.
    When a swimmer sinks towards the bottom of the pool, the new system sends an alarm signal to a poolside monitoring station and a lifeguard’s pager. In trials at a pool in Ancenis, near Nantes, it saved a life within just a few months, says Alistair McQuade, a spokesman for its manufacturer, Poseidon Technologies.
    Poseidon keeps watch through a network of underwater and overhead video cameras. AI software analyses the images to work out swimmers, trajectories. To do this reliably, it has to tell the difference between a swimmer and the shadow of someone being cast onto the bottom or side of the pool. "The underwater environment is a very dynamic one, with many shadows and reflections dancing around." Says McQuade.
    The software does this by "projecting" a shape in its field of view onto an image on the far wall of the pool. It does the same with an image from another camera viewing the shape from a different angle. If the two projections are in the same position, the shape is identified as a shadow and is ignored. But if they are different, the shape is a swimmer and so the system follows its trajectory.
    To pick out potential drowning victims, anyone in the water who starts to descend slowly is added to the software’s "pre-alert" list, says McQuade. Swimmers who then stay immobile on the pool bottom for 5 seconds or more are considered in danger of drowning. Poseidon double-checks that the image really is of a swimmer, not a shadow, by seeing whether it obscures the pool’s floor texture when viewed from overhead. If so, it alerts the lifeguard, showing the swimmer’s location on a poolside screen.
    The first full-scale Poseid6n system will be officially opened next week at a pool in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. One man who is impressed with the idea is Travor Baylis, inventor of the clockwork radio. Baylis runs a company that installs swimming pools—and he was once an underwater escapologist with a circus. "I say full marks to them if this works and can save lives," he says. But he adds that any local authority spending ￡30,000— plus on a Poseidon system ought to be investing similar amounts in teaching children to swim.
AI stands for ______
选项 A、an image.
B、an idea.
C、anyone in the water.
D、artificial intelligence.
答案D
解析 artificial intelligence人工智能。AI由artificial中的第一个字母A和intelligence中的第一个字母I合成。这样的词常叫做“首字母词”。严谨的说法应该是“首字母合成词”。字母词一般由实义词的首字母合成。因此A、B、C都可以排除。A一个图像。B一个思想。C水中的任何一个人。
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