TED英文演说-微型机器人潜力巨大中英文演讲稿.docxVIP

第 第 PAGE 1 页 Tiny robots with giant potential 00:11 Mark Miskin: This is a rotifer. Its a microorganism about a hairs width in size. They live everywhere on earth -- saltwater, freshwater, everywhere -- and this one is out looking for food. 00:23 I remember the first time I saw this thing, I was like eight years old and it completely blew me away. I mean, here is this incredible little creature, its hunting, swimming, going about its life, but its whole universe fits within a drop of pond water. 00:37 Paul McEuen: So this little rotifer shows us something really amazing. It says that you can build a machine that is functional, complex, smart, but all in a tiny little package, one so small that its impossible to see it. 00:53 Now, the engineer in me is just blown away by this thing, that anyone could make such a creature. But right behind that wonder, I have to admit, is a bit of envy. I mean, nature can do it. Why cant we? Why cant we build tiny robots? Well, Im not the only one to have this idea. In fact, in the last, oh, few years, researchers around the world have taken up the task of trying to build robots that are so small that they cant be seen. And what were going to tell you about today is an effort at Cornell University and now at the University of Pennsylvania to try to build tiny robots. 01:33 OK, so thats the goal. But how do we do it? How do we go about building tiny robots? Well, Pablo Picasso, of all people, gives us our first clue. Picasso said -- 01:46 [Good artists copy, great artists steal.] 01:49 Good artists copy. Great artists steal. 01:53 OK. But steal from what? Well, believe it or not, most of the technology you need to build a tiny robot already exists. The semiconductor industry has been getting better and better at making tinier and tinier devices, so at this point they could put something like a million transistors into the size of a package that is occupied by, say, a single-celled paramecium. And its not just electronics. Th