VOA常速英语:Robots Invade Campus to Deliver Burritos

This is not a robot invasion, just Kiwi robots roaming Berkeley waiting for the next delivery. We have little robots to roam the sidewalk and deliver food to your neighborhood.Instead of doing two or three deliveries an hour as the industry does today, we’re able to do six to eight.Using a phone app customers order food from a local restaurant which a human courier picks up and brings to a nearby robot which rolls the meal the rest of the way to a waiting customer.
这并不是机器人入侵了地球，只是Kiwi机器人漫步在伯克利的街头，等待下一次送餐任务。我们在人行道上放置了这些小型机器人，让它们来为邻居们送餐。目前市场上的送餐数额基本上是每小时两份或三份，而我们的机器人则可以完成六份甚至八份。通过手机应用程序，顾客可以从当地的餐馆点餐，服务员会拿起食物送到附近的机器人那里，机器人会完成剩下的流程，把食物配送给等待的顾客。

There’s still a novelty on the street, but these Kiwi robots come equipped with six cameras and sensors to measure distance, avoid obstacles and still deliver their orders on time. And this visualizes over here on the top left is actually showing what the autopilot is actually looking at, so it can detect things like cars moving past or the feet of the people or the scooter.
在街上出现这一场景仍然非常稀奇，但是这些Kiwi机器人配有六个摄像头和传感器，可以用于测量距离、避开障碍物并且按时完成送餐任务。左上角的这幅图像显示了自动驾驶仪实际上看到的内容，这样它就能探测到像经过的汽车、人的脚或踏板车这样的东西。

The robots go back to Kiwi headquarters each night where they are tweaked for optimum performance. One thing that’s happening right now is that the autopilot is actually looking at the shadows over here and thinking that the shadows are like a new wall or a border and it’s trying to avoid that, and we don’t want that to happen. And if the camera system fails, another sensor stops the robot in time. The other failsafe is a team in Columbia which monitors the robots every step.But it’s basically a bunch of people who are sitting around with joysticks, like pretty much playing video games except in real life, you know. They’re actually like making sure the robot doesn’t fall off the side of the street or like bump into someone here.
这些机器人每晚都会返回Kiwi总部，并在那里进行优化以配备最佳性能。我们现在看到的是，自动驾驶仪实际上看到的是这里的阴影，但是它认为阴影是一堵新墙或一条边界，所以它正试图避开这里。我们不希望这种事发生。如果摄像系统发生故障，另一个传感器会及时关闭机器人。另一个防故障配备是位于哥伦比亚的一个小组，他们监视着机器人行进的每一步。他们基本上是一群拿着操纵手柄坐着的人，就像在现实生活中玩电子游戏一样。他们实际上是在确保机器人不会从路边掉下来或者撞到某个人。

It may seem like a lot of effort just to deliver a burrito in under 35 minutes, but each delivery brings us closer to a future where robots are more than just a cute novelty.
让机器人仅仅在35分钟内送出一份玉米煎饼似乎要付出很大的努力，但每一次机器人送餐都让我们更接近一个崭新的未来，在那里，机器人存在的意义远不止是一种可爱的新奇事物。

Michelle Quinn VOA news Berkeley California
美国之音记者Michelle Quinn加利福尼亚州伯克利报道