想要提高托福閱讀水平，我們一定要在日常生活中有意識地增加英語閱讀量，提升語感和熟練度，這樣才能在實際托福考試中游刃有余輕松應對，這其中比較常用也比較方便地一個提升閱讀實力的方式就是利用各類英文報刊雜志文章進行精讀與泛讀練習。下面我們來看一篇經濟學人雙語文章：無人機送貨何時實現。
Future uses
Can drones deliver the goods?
The wait for cargo-carrying drones may be longer than expected
未來應用
無人機能送貨嗎
對貨運無人機的等待可能要長于預期
THERE is a striking disparity between the commercial applications drone companies are pursuing in fields like construction, inspection or agriculture and the public perception of commercial drones. Media coverage is dominated by one particular application: delivery. experimental deliveries of parcels, pizzas and other items conjure up visions of skies abuzz with drones ferrying packages to and fro. But although delivery and logistics companies are interested in drones, many drone companies are not interested in deliveries. “It’s not on our immediate radar,” says Paul Xu of DJI.
無人機公司在建筑、檢驗或農業等領域追求的商業應用，與商業無人機的公眾印象之間存在著顯著的差異。媒體報道幾乎全都是一個特定的應用：送貨。運送包裹、披薩餅和其他物品的試驗激起了人們對于空中遍布著往返運送包裹的無人機的想象。然而，雖然運輸和物流公司對無人機感興趣，許多無人機公司對送貨的熱情卻不高。“這不是我們近期要考慮的。”大疆公司的徐華濱說。
Astro Teller, the boss of X, Google’s semi-secret research laboratory, is one of the lucky few to have received a delivery by drone. It was dispatched last September as part of a test carried out in Virginia by Project Wing, Google’s drone-delivery programme. Its machines come in a variety of shapes: some are “tail-sitters”, flying wings capable of flipping upright and hovering; others are fixed-wing drones augmented by vertical-axis rotors like those on a quadcopter. Both designs combine the benefits of a fixed-wing aircraft for efficient long-distance flight with those of a multirotor for hovering and vertical take-off and landing. When delivering a package the drones do not actually land but float above the recipient and use a winch to lower their cargo: in Dr Teller’s case, a freshly prepared burrito.
谷歌半秘密研究實驗室X的老板阿斯特羅·泰勒(Astro Teller)是少數收到過無人機送貨的幸運兒之一。此次送貨是去年9月，谷歌無人機送貨項目Project Wing在弗吉尼亞進行測試時完成的。當時所用的機器形狀五花八門：有些是“坐式”，可以直立起來并懸停;有些則是固定翼再加上類似于四翼直升機的垂直軸旋翼。這兩種設計將固定翼飛機的高效長距離飛行的優點與多旋翼飛機的懸停和垂直起降結合起來。在交付包裹時，無人機實際上并沒有落地，而是懸在接收者所在位置的上空，用絞繩把貨物放下來。給泰勒送的是一個新鮮的墨西哥卷餅。
Receiving something by drone is “kind of magical”, he says, launching into an impassioned case for drone delivery. Imagine you had a magic elf that could bring you anything you asked for within a minute or two, provided it could fit in a breadbin. You would no longer worry about what to take with you when going out. Nor would you keep common items, like batteries or perishable foodstuffs, on hand at home just in case you needed them. You might not need to own some rarely used objects at all if you could summon them when needed. Rapid drone delivery could thus accelerate the trend from ownership to access in the “sharing economy”, says Dr Teller. He claims delivery drones could be faster, quieter and more environmentally friendly than large delivery trucks. Project Wing now carries out experimental flights daily.
他說，拿到無人機送來的東西確實“有點神奇”，并開始發表對無人機送貨的激情演說。想象一下，一個魔法精靈可以在一兩分鐘內拿來任何你所要的東西，只要它能塞進一個面包盒。你再也不用擔心外出時要帶什么，也用不著在家里囤積電池或易腐食品以備不時之需。如果那些不常用的東西可以召之即來，你甚至根本就不需要擁有它們。泰勒說，快速無人機送貨可能由此加速從所有權轉向“共享經濟”使用權的趨勢。他聲稱送貨無人機可以比大型運輸卡車更快、更安靜、更環保。Project Wing現在每天都要進行實驗飛行。
The technology giant most closely associated with delivery drones is Amazon. When its boss, Jeff Bezos, revealed his plans for drones in December 2013 on “60 Minutes”, an American television programme, they were widely assumed to be a publicity stunt. But Amazon is quite serious: it carried out its first trial delivery to a customer near Cambridge, England, last December—“13 minutes from click to delivery,” says Gur Kimchi, the head of Amazon’s drone effort. In March 2017 it conducted its first delivery demonstration in America, at a conference in Palm Springs. Like Google, Amazon is evaluating a range of different designs, all of which involve the drone lowering its package onto a target in the recipient’s garden or backyard. Logistics firms such as DHL and UPS, as well as some startups, are also looking at drone delivery.
與送貨無人機關系最密切的技術巨頭是亞馬遜。當它的老板杰夫·貝佐斯(Jeff Bezos)在2013年12月的《60分鐘》電視節目上公布無人機計劃時，人們還普遍認為這是個噱頭。但亞馬遜是很認真的：去年12月它首次試驗送貨給英國劍橋附近的一位客戶——“從下單到送貨共用了13分鐘。”亞馬遜公司無人機項目的負責人古爾·金姆齊(Gur Kimchi)說。2017年3月，亞馬遜在美國棕櫚泉舉行的一次會議上首次演示了送貨。和谷歌一樣，亞馬遜正在評估一系列不同的設計，所有設計都需要無人機把包裹放到收件人的花園或后院的某個目標物上。DHL和UPS等物流公司以及一些創業公司也在關注無人機送貨。
But if widespread drone delivery is to become a reality, many technical and regulatory hurdles must be overcome. These include ensuring that drones do not fall and cause injury, and can land safely if something goes wrong; and preventing collisions with power lines, trees and other aircraft. Moreover, small drones have limited cargo-carrying capacity; not everyone has a garden or backyard; and deliveries require beyond-line-of-sight, autonomous operation, which requires special permission. So at least for now, many drone firms are steering clear. “It’s very challenging, and we do not want to promise something we can’t deliver,” says Mr Xu. “Delivery just bundles together all the hard problems,” says Mr Bry, who worked on Project Wing before leaving to found Skydio. He thinks it could take a decade to solve these problems.
但是，大規模無人機送貨要想成為現實，還必須克服許多技術和監管障礙，包括確保無人機不會墜落并造成傷害，在出現問題時能夠安全著陸，并防止與電線、樹木和其他飛機碰撞。此外，小型無人機承載能力有限;不是每個人都有花園或后院;交付要求超視距自主操作，而這需要特別許可。所以至少到目前為止，很多無人機公司都避開這一領域。徐華濱說：“這很有挑戰性，我們不想對交付不了的東西作出承諾。”亞當·布萊(Adam Bry)曾在Project Wing工作，之后離職創辦了Skydio。他說：“送貨把所有這些困難的問題都綁在了一起。”他認為解決這些問題可能需要十年時間。
One application where drone delivery may make more sense, and is already in use, is ferrying medical supplies to remote areas that are hard to reach by road. Zipline, an American startup staffed by veterans of Google, SpaceX, Boeing and NASA, began delivering medical supplies in rural Rwanda using fixed-wing drones in October 2016. It has an agreement with the government to deliver blood products to 21 transfusion clinics from two bases, the first of which is already serving five clinics. Zipline’s drones can fly 150km on a single charge and work in rain and winds of up to 30km an hour. They are launched using a catapult, fly below 150 metres (500 feet) and drop cargo packages weighing 1.5kg by parachute.
無人機送貨可能有一個更有意義的用途，那就是將醫療用品運送到陸路難以到達的偏遠地區。這已經發生了。由谷歌、SpaceX、波音和NASA的老員工組建的美國創業公司Zipline從2016年10月開始使用固定翼無人機向盧旺達農村提供醫療用品。該公司與盧旺達政府達成協議，從兩個基地向21個輸血診所提供血液制品，其中第一個基地已經為五個診所提供了服務。Zipline無人機充電一次可飛行150公里，并可在雨中及風速高達每小時30公里的情況下工作。它們使用彈射器發射，飛行高度低于150米，并用降落傘投放重1.5公斤的貨物包裹。
Rolling out the service means mapping the best routes for the aircraft, which fly autonomously, co-ordinating with military and civilian authorities, training clinic staff to receive cargo and reassuring the local communities along the route. Whether all this is economically viable, or just a publicity stunt by Rwanda’s tech-loving government, is unclear. But the company is talking to governments in other countries about operating similar services, focusing on medical deliveries outside urban areas. It hopes to change public perceptions of the word “drone”. Zipline’s Justin Hamilton says one of the firm’s engineers once told him that he used to work on drones that drop bombs, “and now he builds drones that drop blood.”
要開展這項服務，就要將最佳路線告訴自主飛行的飛機，與軍方和政府協調，培訓診所工作人員接收貨物，并讓沿線社區放心。這一切是真的在經濟上可行，還是僅僅是熱愛科技的盧旺達政府的噱頭，尚不得而知。但是，該公司正在與其他國家的政府進行關于提供類似服務的溝通，重點關注城市以外的醫療遞送。它希望改變公眾對“無人機”這個詞的看法。Zipline的賈斯汀·漢密爾頓(Justin Hamilton)說，公司的一名工程師曾經告訴他，自己以前造的是投擲炸彈的無人機，“現在他造的是投放血液的無人機了。”
Other startups say that drone delivery in urban areas is already possible—but using drones moving on the ground rather than in the air. Starship Technologies, based in Estonia, and Dispatch, based in California, have both developed wheeled, coolbox-sized drones that trundle along pavements to make local deliveries. Starship’s drones are being tested in several cities around the world, and Dispatch is about to begin tests in the San Francisco Bay Area. Both firms use a “partial autonomy” model, meaning that their drones can be remotely piloted for some or all of a route. As the drone approaches its destination, the recipient receives a smartphone alert, and when it arrives he uses his phone to pop open a lockable compartment to retrieve the cargo.
其他創業公司表示，在城市中用無人機送貨已經成為可能——但使用的是在地上移動而非空中飛行的無人機。總部設在愛沙尼亞的Starship Technologies公司和位于加州的Dispatch公司都開發了了手提箱大小的輪式無人機，在人行道上顛簸著做小范圍送貨。Starship的無人機正在世界各地的幾個城市進行測試，Dispatch則即將在舊金山灣區開始測試。兩家公司都使用“部分自治”模式，這意味著它們的無人機可以在部分路線或全程接受遠程操控。無人機接近目的地時，收件人會在智能手機上收到提示;到達后，收件人可以用手機打開一個可鎖定的貨艙來收取貨物。
What if people steal the drone? Anyone who tries, says Stav Braun of Dispatch, has “just stolen a homing beacon”. A bigger concern, she says, is ensuring that the robot is courteous and people feel safe around it. But so far the response has been positive.
如果有人把無人機偷走了怎么辦?Dispatch的斯塔夫·布朗(Stav Braun)說，任何試圖偷走它的人“只是偷走了一個追蹤器”。她說，更大的問題在于確保機器人有禮貌，人們在它身邊會感到安全。不過到目前為止，反響都還不錯。
Instant gratification
Clement Jambou of Unsupervised.ai, a French delivery-drone startup, thinks the steps and kerbs of urban environments will be too difficult for wheeled robots to navigate, so his firm’s delivery drone has legs instead and resembles a dog. He may disagree with Dr Teller on the best way to set about it, but Mr Jambou has a very similar vision for fast, cheap drone delivery. For example, he imagines people renting rather than buying clothes, tools and other household items, dispatched by drone from a neighbourhood depot when needed.
即時滿足
法國送貨無人機創業公司Unsupervised.ai的克萊芒·讓布(Clement Jambou)認為，輪式機器人難以應付城市環境中的臺階和路沿，所以他的公司的送貨無人機有腿，看起來就像一只狗。讓布未必同意泰勒關于最佳送貨方式的看法，但對于快速、廉價的無人機送貨前景卻所見略同。例如，他想象人們會租借而不是購買衣物、工具和其他家庭用品，無人機會在需要時從臨近的倉庫里為他們發貨。
Dr Teller, for his part, is confident that the technical and safety obstacles to flying delivery drones can be overcome. But it will be a gradual process involving “lots of data and demonstration” to satisfy regulators. “The magical elf won’t change the world unless it can go beyond visual line-of-sight, fly over people and have a small number of operators responsible for a large number of vehicles,” he says, none of which is allowed under current regulations. Google is working on making its drones resilient to the failure of a single rotor, battery or motor, the loss of GPS coverage and other potential problems. “We are building up evidence that we can do this safely,” he says. That will take a while, but Google expects its “moonshots” to take up to a decade to pay off. Work on Project Wing began in 2012.
泰勒博士則對于克服飛行送貨無人機的技術和安全障礙信心滿滿。但這將是一個漸進的過程，涉及“大量數據和演示”以滿足監管機構的要求。他說：“這個魔法小精靈不會改變世界，除非它能超越視距，在人們頭頂上方飛過，并讓少數操作員負責大量飛行器。”而現行規定下，這些都不被允許。谷歌正在努力使其無人機能夠克服單個旋翼、電池或電機故障、失去GPS信號等潛在問題。“我們正在積累證據，證明我們能夠安全地做這件事。”他說。這需要一段時間，但谷歌預計其“登月計劃”需要十年才能得到回報。Project Wing的工作始于2012年。
The disagreement over the viability of delivery drones, then, is mostly a matter of timing. For companies that wish to put drones to work now, delivery is not a good bet. But for logistics companies it makes sense to start exploring the possibilities. The end result may well be a hybrid system of delivery trucks that arrive in a neighbourhood and disgorge flying and wheeled drones.
因此，對無人機送貨可行性的分歧主要是時間問題。對于那些希望讓無人機現在就服役的公司而言，送貨不是一個好的賭注。但對于物流公司來說，開始探索這種可能性是有意義的。最終的結果很可能是一個混合系統：送貨卡車開到一個社區附近，然后分發出飛行和輪式無人機。
Deliveries are just one of the proposed uses of drones that seem speculative or impractical now but may become significant in future. Facebook, like Google and Amazon, is also investing in drones, but not for delivery: instead its drone, called Aquila, is a huge solar-powered machine intended as a communications relay, to extend internet access to parts of the world that lack connectivity. This will have health and educational benefits, the social-media giant says, but will also help it sign up more users. Aquila made its first test flight in June 2016. Facebook’s boss, Mark Zuckerberg, explained in a blog post afterwards that his goal is “a fleet of Aquilas flying together at 60,000 feet, communicating with each other with lasers and staying aloft for months at a time”, beaming internet access over wide areas.
有些無人機應用目前看似投機或不切實際，但未來可能變得重要，送貨就是其中一種。和谷歌和亞馬遜一樣，Facebook也投資于無人機，但不是為了送貨：它名為“Aquila”的無人機是一個由太陽能供電的巨大機器，將作為通信中繼站，將互聯網提供給世界上尚未通網的地方。這家社交媒體巨頭表示，這將有益于健康和教育，也能為Facebook吸引更多新用戶。Aquila于2016年6月首次試飛。Facebook的老板馬克·扎克伯格事后在一篇博文中解釋說，他的目標是“一隊Aquila飛行在六萬英尺的高空，相互之間使用激光通信，一次可飛行數月”，為廣大地區發射互聯網連接。
Making all this work is a lofty goal. In November it emerged that the prototype Aquila had been substantially damaged on landing, triggering an investigation by flight-safety inspectors. And getting permission to fly such aircraft over any populated areas will not be easy. In January Google scrapped its own high-altitude communications-relay drone, Titan.
讓這一切變成現實是一個崇高的目標。11月，Aquila原型在著陸時嚴重損壞，招致飛行安全檢查員的調查。要獲得許可在任何人口稠密地區放飛這種飛行器也非易事。谷歌于1月份放棄了自己的高空通信中繼無人機“Titan”。
Dr Teller says that Google now sees more promise for extending internet access in high-altitude balloons; they are easier to keep airborne and much more lightly regulated than drones. Military drones such as the Global Hawk can already act as telecoms relays, so that part of the technology is proven; the challenge is to harness solar power to keep drones aloft for weeks or months, not just a day or two. Large, lightweight UAVs can theoretically use solar power to remain in the air for weeks at a time; a prototype Zephyr drone, built by Airbus, Europe’s aviation giant, stayed aloft for 14 days during a test flight in 2010.
泰勒稱，谷歌如今認為通過高空氣球擴展互聯網接入更有希望：它們更容易保持飛行，監管也比無人機寬松很多。“全球鷹”這樣的軍用無人機已經可以充當電信中繼站，所以這部分技術已得到證明。挑戰在于利用太陽能來保持無人機飛行數周或數月，而不僅僅是一兩天。龐大而輕量的無人機在理論上可以使用太陽能一次滯空數周。2010年，歐洲航空巨頭空中客車公司建造的Zephyr無人機原型在一次試飛時在空中停留了14天。
High-altitude drones have also been proposed as a way to generate electricity, because strong winds blow more reliably well above the ground. Known as wind drones or energy kites, such drones are tethered so that cables can deliver the electricity back to the ground. Makani, a startup acquired by Google in 2013, reckons a single energy kite can generate 50% more electricity than a single wind turbine while using only 10% of the materials. Each Makani drone, which resembles a wing with eight propellers, weighs 11 tonnes, compared with about 100 tonnes for a comparable 600kW turbine. This approach is being pursued by other firms too, including Ampyx Power and Kite Power Systems, both backed by E.ON, a German utility. Tethered drones on a smaller scale are also being considered for indoor use in warehouses, where they might help with stocktaking. Flying indoors neatly sidesteps many regulatory problems, and supplying power via tethers does away with the need for recharging. But GPS cannot be used for positioning.
也有人提出使用高空無人機來發電，因為高空的強風更為可靠。這種無人機被稱為風力無人機或電力風箏，連有系索以便電纜將電力送回地面。Makani是谷歌于2013年收購的一家創業公司，它估算，一個電力風箏的發電量比一個風力渦輪多50%，但使用的材料僅為后者的10%。每個Makani無人機有八個螺旋槳，重11噸，而同樣的600千瓦渦輪機則重約100噸。其他公司也在追求這種方法，包括Ampyx Power和Kite Power Systems，兩家公司都得到了德國公用事業公司E.ON的支持。還有人考慮將較小的有線無人機用于倉庫中的室內應用，比如用它們來幫助盤點。室內飛行漂亮地回避了許多監管問題，且通過系繩供電免除了充電的需求，不過就不能用GPS來定位了。
At the lowest end of the spectrum are insect-like drones, just a few centimetres across, that could be used for surveillance inside buildings, search and rescue, or even pollinating plants. Building very small drones is hard because the technology used in larger drones cannot simply be scaled down; different approaches are needed. In a paper published in February in the journal Chem, Japanese researchers explained how insect-sized drones covered in hairs coated with a special gel picked up pollen from one plant and deposited it on another. They concluded that robotic pollinators might offer a remedy for the decline in honeybee populations.
整個無人機譜系最低端的是昆蟲般的無人機，只有幾厘米大小，可用于建筑物內的監視、搜救甚至為植物授粉。制作非常小的無人機并非易事，因為大型無人機使用的技術并不能簡單地按比例縮小，而是需要不同的手段。日本研究人員2月份在《Chem》雜志上發表了一篇論文，文中解釋了昆蟲大小、表面覆蓋毛發(毛發上涂有一種特殊的凝膠)的無人機如何從一棵植物中采集花粉再投放到另一棵植物上。他們得出結論稱，傳粉機器人也許可以為蜜蜂數量的減少提供一種補救措施。
Perhaps the most far-out proposal to date is to use drones to carry human passengers in self-flying taxis. This is harder than using drones for package delivery, because it raises safety concerns for people in the air, not just on the ground. EHang, a Chinese drone firm, hopes to test its one-person drone, which resembles a giant quadcopter with a passenger compartment, in Dubai in July. Other companies, including Airbus, Uber and Kitty Hawk, have proposed similar “flying car” drones. Dario Floreano, a robotics professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (see next article), has been thinking about passenger drones as part of the European Union’s “myCopter” project. Packages, he says, can withstand sudden accelerations during flight that humans cannot, which makes path-planning and obstacle avoidance more difficult. And the limited energy density of batteries may restrict the range of passenger drones to intra-city hops.
也許迄今為止最奇怪的提議是把無人機作為自駕空中出租車來運送乘客。這比使用無人機遞送包裹更困難，因為除了地面人員的安全，它還引發了空中人員的安全問題。中國無人機公司億航希望7月份在迪拜測試其單人無人機，這個機器像是一個帶座艙的巨型四翼直升機。其他公司，包括空中客車、優步和Kitty Hawk都提出了類似的“飛行車”無人機設想。瑞士聯邦理工學院的機器人學教授達里奧·弗洛雷諾(Dario Floreano)一直在考慮將載客無人機作為歐盟“myCopter”項目的一部分。他說，包裹可以承受人類所不能承受的飛行時突然加速，這使得規劃路徑和避讓障礙的任務變得更加艱巨。電池能量密度有限，可能會將載客無人機的運作范圍限制在城市內。
It is a big leap from today’s drones to these sorts of uses. Trying to imagine how drones will evolve, and the uses to which they will be put, is a bit like trying to forecast the evolution of computing in the 1960s or mobile phones in the 1980s. Their potential as business tools was clear at the time, but the technology developed in unexpected ways. The same will surely be true of drones.
從今天的無人機到此類用途還需要一個巨大的飛躍。要想象無人機將如何演變、將會有什么用途，就有點像是在20世紀60年代預測計算能力的演化，或是在20世紀80年代預測手機的變化。它們作為商業工具的潛力在當時已經很清楚，但技術的發展卻出乎意料。無人機的發展必定也是如此。
