Driverless Automobiles-The Car That Parks Itself

Autonomous vehicles are arriving piecemeal, as more and more driving tasks are taken out of human hands. CARS that need no driver are just around the corner according to Google, which has been testing vehicles bristling with aerials and cameras on public roads in America. But Google does not make cars, so it will be up to firms that do to bring the _________ to market. And carmakers are a conservative bunch. Still, slowly and _________ the autonomous car will arrive, with the help of an increasing number of automated driving aids.

Volvo recently _________ one such feature: a car that really does park itself. Some cars already have systems that assist with parking, but these are not completely autonomous. They can _________ an empty parallel-parking space and steer into it while the driver uses the brake. The Volvo system, however, lets the driver get out and use a smartphone application to _________ the vehicle to park, then sends a message to the driver to inform him where it is. The driver can collect the car _________ or use his phone to call it back to where he dropped it off. Autonomous parking could thus be provided at places like shopping centres and airports, which are controlled areas in which automated vehicles can be _________ more easily than on open highways.

In the past, _________ for doing this have relied on car parks being fitted with buried guide wires that a vehicle can follow to an empty bay. That, _________, creates a chicken-and-egg problem: car-park operators will not invest in such infrastructure until there is a(an)__________ number of suitably equipped cars on the road. Drivers, conversely, will not want to buy self-parking cars if there is nowhere to use them. This means, as Mikael Thor, a Volvo safety engineer working on the project, __________, that for autonomous parking to work most of the technology will have to be in the car itself.

The Volvo test car, which looks like a(an) __________ car, therefore uses on-board GPS mapping, cameras with image-recognition software, and radar sensors to find its own way around a car park and __________ pedestrians and non-autonomous vehicles. Mr. Thor says the system is five to ten years from commercial deployment. If it proves a success then infrastructure might __________ it.

Driverless cars would also need to communicate with one another, to __________ safety. That, too, is coming. A number of carmakers are developing wireless networking systems through which vehicles can exchange data, such as their speed, their steering angle and even their weight, to forewarn anti-collision systems and safety devices if an accident looks likely.

When we think about scientists and their great discoveries and inventions, we often think about strange men in white coats_______hours and days and years in their laboratories trying to solve a problem. However, if you believe the stories, there are times when a scientist makes a_______in a moment of inspiration, perhaps when he is no even_______the problem. Let's look at three famous scientists, Archimedes, Isaac Newton and James Watt, who, according to well-known stories, had moments of inspiration.

The story of Archimedes is perhaps the best known. According to the story, Archimedes was lying in his bath one day when he noticed water_______from the bath. He suddenly realized that there must be a_______between his body weight and the water overflowing from the bath. He was so_______that he jumped out of the bath and ran naked down the street shouting "Eureka"! In Greek, the language which Archimedes spoke, "Eureka" means "I have found it". Archimedes was right to be excited because he had discovered the principle of why some things float and others_______. This principle has now been_______in shipbuilding for centuries.

The story about Isaac Newton is well known too. According to this story, Newton was resting under an apple tree one day when an apple fell on his head. Newton realized that there must be a_______which had caused the apple to drop rather than stay________in the air. He also realized that this force must work even at the top of a very tall tree and thought that the force might even work in the skies and in space.________, Newton had discovered the law of gravity.

As for James Watt, it is said that he was boiling a kettle of water one day to make a cup of tea. When the water started to boil he noticed that the lid of the kettle began to move.________even the whole kettle was moving. This made him think about the idea of steam power. This discovery________the invention of steam engines, and then the steam train.

Why don't we all get these moments of inspiration? We have to remember that Archimedes, Newton and Watt were probably not thinking about these________for the first time. The bath, the apple and the kettle were the final ________in the thinking process. What is also remarkable about all three men is that they were able to see how the principles they had discovered could be used. Remember the saying, "Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration".

On July 24, 1916, a natural gas explosion trapped 32 men working in a tunnel 250 feet below Lake Erie. The first rescuers who entered the tunnel were _________ by gas, and for hours no one else dared to enter the suffocating (窒息的), _________ deathtrap.

Then, late that night, someone had an idea: _________ Garrett Morgan and his new invention. Garrett Morgan was a successful factory owner in Cleveland. The son of freed slaves and the seventh of 11 children, mechanically minded Morgan had opened his own sewing machine shop, which he soon _________ to a tailoring factory with 32 employees.

In the early 1900s, factory buildings were crowded and untidy. They were often made of wood, with no fire escapes. Fire could cause serious _________. Concerned about his employees, Morgan _________ with a “safety hood” (头罩) that would allow the wearer to _________ despite a fire’s poisonous smoke.

Morgan knew smoke rises during a fire. Therefore, he created a heat-resistant hood with a long tube reaching to the floor. Wearing Morgan’s hood, a firefighter could breathe the _________ air near the ground. Morgan lined the breathing tube with a sponge-like material that was wetted before use to ___________ the air. A second tube was designed to __________ exhaled (呼出的) air.

Called to the scene on the night of the tunnel explosion, Garrett arrived with samples of his safety hood. Still in their nightwear, he and his brother Frank put on the hoods and bravely entered the tunnel. It was a dangerous __________ of the invention, but they saved two lives and __________ four bodies before officials closed the __________. Morgan knew that more lives might have been saved if he had been called sooner.

The daring __________ made Morgan famous and brought requests for safety hoods from fire departments around the country. But his greatest __________ was knowing that his invention would now save more people.