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  3. Scientists in Belgium spent months building robotic versions of the dreaded vermin and then let them loose in a community of rea

Scientists in Belgium spent months building robotic versions of the dreaded vermin and then let them loose in a community of rea

admin2015-04-10  41
问题     Scientists in Belgium spent months building robotic versions of the dreaded vermin and then let them loose in a community of real roaches. The robots not only blended in with their biological cousins, they acted as agents for the scientists, influencing the roach community’s collective decisions to search for the best resting location. The ultimate goal of the research is to figure out how the simple behavior of individuals gives rise to a complex collective decision. The principle, called emergence, is fundamental to life. What is the relationship between each bee’s individual motion and the hive’s overall success? How do millions of brain cells give rise to thought? The roach is a good launching point toward these big questions because its social system is simple enough for scientists to study mathematically.
    The first step was to build robots that real roaches would accept as their own. Although the robotic bugs don’t look much like the real thing, they act like them in two key ways: they naturally head toward dark areas and are influenced by the presence of other cockroaches. And more important, they smell like roaches. They emit the same molecules that roaches use to identify their kin, giving the robots a unique roach smell. "We could see the cockroaches accepting the robot when it had the right scents, touching and climbing on it," says Jose Halloy, a professor of life sciences.
    The next step was getting the robotic and biological roaches to cooperate on common tasks. In experiments, the robots would collectively head toward a dark shelter, mimicking the nighttime behavior of natural cockroaches. That got the researchers wondering: if you program the robot-roaches to make an inappropriate decision and head toward the lighted shelter, would the real cockroaches follow, going against their natural instincts?
    Many of the biological roaches reduced their natural tendency to prefer dark places and followed the collective to a lighter shelter. But influence turned out to be a two-way street. On occasion, the real roaches were able to override the programming of their machine counterparts and get them to scurry into dark hiding places. Being social creatures, both the robotic and natural roaches were paying attention to and following after the example set by others. Theoretically it would be possible to create a robot that could influence collective decision-making in humans. To do this, researchers would have to invent a robot that people would accept. Fortunately, robot technology isn’t there yet.
What is the passage mainly about?
选项 A、The relationship between bees’ individual motion and the hive’s overall success.
B、The process of a scientific experiment about the robot-roaches and the real ones.
C、How millions of brain cells give rise to thoughts.
D、How to invent a robot that human beings would accept.
答案B
解析 本文主要讲[A]蜜蜂的个体行为和整个蜂群的成就之间的关系。[B]一个有关机器蟑螂和真蟑螂的科学实验。[C]数以百万计的脑细胞如何引起思考。[D]如何发明一个人类会接受的机器人。浏览四个选项，从第一段的前两句话即可判断[B]正确。作者并没有就[A]和[C]进行深入探讨，[D]同样为干扰项。
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