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What if you arrived home to find a delicious hot meal waiting for you, prepared by your own kitchen robot? It might sound like science fiction, but professors at the University of Tokyo have taken the first steps toward making that a reality. The team recently introduced a human-shaped kitchen robot that can pour tea and other drinks into cups and serve them to guests. When teatime is over, the robot can also wash the dishes and put them away.
In California, another interesting kitchen robot has been developed, called Readbot. It can pick up objects and either store them in cabinets (橱柜) or put them in the trash. It also carries a separate floor-cleaning robot that can operate by itself. Unlike the Japanese robot, Readybot just looks more like a large box with arms and wheels.
Readybot was created by engineers and designers who established a club called the Readybot Challenge. They believe that in the future millions of robots will be needed in homes to perform ordinary household tasks. Readybot is just the first step in their plan to create a robot that can do jobs not only in kitchens but in other rooms of homes and in offices as well.
Clearly there are technological difficulties to solve before robots can cook a complete dinner, and there are also many safety concerns (忧虑). Not everyone (especially parents) would be comfortable with the idea of robots in their house, manipulating hot pans and sharp knives. The European Commission recently funded(资助) a project to study these concerns. According to lead researcher Professor Chris Melhuish, “Enabling robots to work safely with humans is a key need for the future development of robotics.”
21．Compared with Readybot, the Japanese robot __________.
A. is more popular B. performs more jobs
C. looks more like a person D. moves more quickly
22．Readybot can now be used to __________.
A. drive you around B. clean your kitchen
C. prepare food for you D. work for office workers
23．The underlined word “manipulating” can best be replaced by __________.
A. inventing B. avoiding C. making D. Controlling
24．In the last paragraph the author says that parents __________.
A. have shown great interest in kitchen robots
B. can’t wait to use kitchen robots in their homes
C. might think that kitchen robots could be dangerous
D. found out how to operate robots safely
