A 1.6-metre-tall robot may soon become the best friend for lonely elderly people, as Chinese scientists are making the final sprint(冲刺) towards its market launch(启动), said a senior researcher on the robot project on Saturday.

“We 【小题1】 testing the exact functions and ways to reduce the cost 【小题2】 an expected market launch of the robot in two to three years,” said Li Ruifeng, a member of the project.

He said the team hoped to reduce the cost 【小题3】 the robot can be priced at 30, 000 to 50, 000 yuan, which is expected to be an affordable price for most of China’s better-off families.

The robot has been developed with the 【小题4】 of fetching food and medicine, sounding alarms 【小题5】 water or gas leakage(泄露), sending texts or video images via 【小题6】 communications, and even singing a song or playing chess 【小题7】 its masters.

Li said that the robot, developed independently in China, has technology at the same 【小题8】 as those in Western labs.

China set about the research of the robot in 2007, when it was listed as a national key project. It is backed by government funding. China has the world’s largest elderly population with 159 million people over 60, 【小题9】 12 percent of its total population. According to a survey by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, more than 10 million caregiver s and nurses are needed to attend to the elderly, as most of Chinese elderly prefer to live their 【小题10】 lives at home.

Time travel, alien invasions, and artificial intelligence have always been popular themes in science fiction. However, these were never the exclusive domains of sci-fi writers. Some scientists also【小题1】 explore these themes【小题2】. Take time travel as an example. Many fascinating stories based on time travel go either【小题3】 or forwards in time. However, the former is not really an option. World-famous scientist Stephen Hawking once explained that travelling into the past would 【小题4】the basic rule that cause comes before effect. But it would be possible to travel into the future in a vastly 【小题5】spaceship approaching the speed of light. In addition to the question of time travel, Hawking also expressed his opinions on alien invasions and Al development. When many scientists and scholars were still arguing about the 【小题6】of alien existence and AI development, Hawking said he believed aliens would invade Earth, and that humans would eventually【小题7】 by Aland robots.

There are so many amazing scientists and 【小题1】 discoveries that it is hard to choose the most important one. One of the 【小题2】 scientists to 【小题3】 in the 20 century was Albert Einstein. He showed us that mass, energy and time are not constant, which changed our entire understanding of the universe. This was known as the “theory of 【小题4】”.

Einstein changed our understanding of ourselves and the universe around us, but it was Alexander Fleming who, I think, changed the quality of our lives. His discovery that blue 【小题5】, a form of 【小题6】 could kill bacteria and save millions of people around the world. Illnesses that used to be fatal are now minor thanks to the use of this amazing natural drug. His 【小题7】 nature meant that he never took much credit for this discovery, praising nature instead.

Finally, the invention of the first computer and 【小题8】, the Internet has had far-reaching effects and changed the world entirely. Originally, the idea of networked computers communicating with each other was 【小题9】 by American scientists during the Cold War.

It wasn’t until 1990 that Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. Since then, connectivity has become so commonplace that even a one-year-old child is able to tap and slide a screen on a smartphone and open up a world of content. We can now work, live and communicate instantly and 【小题10】.

Let’s see what will be rated as the single most important discovery of the 21st century.