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Reading Practice - Answer

The document discusses whether space exploration should be done by robots or humans. While robots have advantages of lower cost and complexity, humans can perform tasks robots cannot and correct issues. Both robots and humans have roles to play, with robots assisting humans rather than replacing them, as fully autonomous systems are still difficult to achieve.

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Winnie Ha
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419 views1 page

Reading Practice - Answer

The document discusses whether space exploration should be done by robots or humans. While robots have advantages of lower cost and complexity, humans can perform tasks robots cannot and correct issues. Both robots and humans have roles to play, with robots assisting humans rather than replacing them, as fully autonomous systems are still difficult to achieve.

Uploaded by

Winnie Ha
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Should space be explored by robots or by humans?

A The advisability of humans participating directly in space travel continues to cause many debates. There is
no doubt that the presence of people on board a space vehicle makes its design much more complex and
challenging, and produces a large increase in costs, since safety requirements are greatly increased, and the
technology providing necessities for human passengers such as oxygen, food water must be guaranteed.
Moreover, the systems required are bulky and costly, and their complexity increases for long-duration
missions. Meanwhile, advances in electronics and computer science allow increasingly complex tasks to be
entrusted to robots, and unmanned space probes are becoming lighter, smaller and more convenient.

B However, experience has shown that the idea of humans in space is popular with the public. Humans can
also be useful; there are many cases when only direct intervention by an astronaut or cosmonaut can correct
the malfunction of an automatic device. Astronauts and cosmonauts have proved that they can adapt to
conditions of weightlessness and work in space without encountering too many problems, as was seen in the
operations to repair and to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope. One human characteristic which is
particularly precious in space missions, and which so far is lacking in robots, is the ability to perform a great
variety of tasks. In addition, robots are not good at reacting to situations they have not been specifically
prepared for. This is especially important in the case of deep space missions. While, in the case of the Moon,
it is possible for someone on Earth to ‘tele-operate’ a robotic device such as a probe, as the two-way link
time is only a couple of seconds, on Mars the two- way link time is several minutes, so sending instructions
from Earth is more difficult.

C Many of the promises of artificial intelligence are still far from being fulfilled. The construction of
machines simulating human logical reasoning moves towards ever more distant dates. The more the
performance of computers improves, the more we realise how difficult it is to build machines which display
logical abilities. In the past it was confidently predicted that we would soon have fully automated factories
in which all operations were performed without any human intervention, and forecasts of the complete
substitution of workers by robots in many production areas were made. Today, these perspectives are being
revised. It seems that all machines, even the smartest ones, must cooperate with humans. Rather than
replacing humans, the present need appears to be for an intelligent machine capable of helping a human
operator without replacing him or her. The word ‘cobot’, from ‘collaborative robot’, has been invented to
designate this type.

D A similar trend is also apparent in the field of space exploration. Tasks which were in the past entrusted
only to machines are now performed by human beings, sometimes with the aim of using simpler and less
costly devices, sometimes to obtain better performance. In many cases, to involve a person in the control
loop is a welcome simplification which may lower the cost of a mission without compromising safety. Many
operations originally designed to be performed under completely automatic control can be performed more
efficiently by astronauts, perhaps helped by their ‘cobots’. The human-machine relationship must evolve
towards a closer collaboration.

Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.

List of Headings

1. Robots on Earth – a re-evaluation

2. The barriers to cooperation in space exploration

3. Some limitations of robots in space

4. Reduced expectations for space exploration

5. A general reconsideration of human/robot responsibilities in space

6. Problems in using humans for space exploration

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