Imagine a team of humans and robots working together to process online orders. Real-life workers strategically positioned among their automated coworkers who are moving intelligently back and forth in a warehouse (仓库)space, picking items for shipping to the customer.

This could become a reality sooner or later thanks to researchers at the University of Missouri, who are working to speed up the online delivery process by developing a software model designed to make transport robots smarter.

“The robotic technology already exists,” said Sharan Srinivas, who specializes in data analytics and operations research. “Our goal is to best apply this technology through efficient planning. To do this, we’re asking questions like ‘given a list of items to pick, how do you optimize (优化)the route plan for the human pickers and robots?’ or ‘how many items should a robot pick in a given tour?’ Likewise, we have a similar set of questions for the human worker. The most challenging part is optimizing the collaboration plan between the human pickers and robots.”:

Currently, a lot of human effort and labor costs are involved with fulfilling online orders. To help optimize this process, robotic companies have already developed cooperative robots, also known as cobots or autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), to work in a warehouse or distribution center. AMRs are equipped with sensors and cameras to help them navigate(确定方向)around a controlled space like a warehouse.

Srinivas said, “The robot is intelligent, so if it’s instructed to go to a particular location, it can navigate the warehouse and not hit any workers or other obstacles along the way. AMRs are not designed to replace human workers, but instead can work cooperatively alongside them to help increase the efficiency of the order fulfillment process.”

“The one drawback is that these robots do not have good grasping abilities,” said Srinivas. “But humans are good at grasping items, so we are trying to balance the strength of both resources.”

The guy who tried to edit English

The English vocabulary is not only huge, but also full of words that mean practically(几乎) the same thing- Get, obtain, acquire. Shine, gleam, glow, sparkle. 【小题1】

That was the thinking of a British writer named C. K. Ogden, who in the 1930s proposed (提议) a new form of English with a vocabulary of just 850 words. He called the project Basic English 【小题2】

Ogden arrived at his 850-word list through experimentation, rephrasing texts over and over until he was satisfied. The words he finally included were not necessarily the shortest or most concrete. 【小题3】 Because any verbal idea could be expressed with a small number of “operators”---words like come, go, get, take, have, make, be, and do. Ogden argued that most verbs were unnecessary. In Basic English, “eat” is “have a meal” and “forget” is “go from memory”.

Winston Churchill was a fan of the concept as a way to get foreigners to speak English, and he encouraged the BBC to use it. 【小题4】 Roosevelt, who expressed mild interest, joked that Churchill's famous speech about offering his “blood, toil, tears, and sweat” to his country wouldn't have been so exciting if he “had been able to offer the British people only blood, work, eye water, and face water, which I understand is the best that Basic English can do with five famous words.”

【小题5】 Churchill didn't use it either. When seeking to express ourselves, we don't necessarily need fewer words; we need the right words. So it's to our benefit to have a large supply on hand.

Flying cars have been growing in popularity in the past few years with even big players such as Boeing and Porsche looking to develop these vehicles. Now, a city in England is hosting the world’s first airport for flying cars.

British-based start-up Urban-Air Port has partnered with car giant Hyundai Motor Group to engineer this futuristic airport in order to give everyone a taste of what is to come in the future of air travel. They are calling their new construction the Urban Air Port. The new project will develop a zero-emission infrastructure (基础设施)that will host the next generation of electric and autonomous air vehicles.

Cars need roads, trains need rails, planes need airports, and electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft will need Urban Air Ports — Air-One, which will bring clean urban air transport to the masses and create a new airborne world of zero-emission mobility. The Urban-Air Port will improve connectivity across our cities and boost productivity. An Urban Air Port is 60% smaller than a traditional heliport, can be built in a matter of days, and can be moved to alternative sites if the need arises. It’s also extremely eco-friendly as it emits net-zero carbon emissions.

An Urban Air Port can support any eVTOL aircraft and is ideal for emergency circumstances as il can rapidly deploy drones and other eVTOL aircraft to transport supplies, equipment, and people where needed most.

In I he meantime, Hyundai has stated that it has plans to create its own eVTOL aircraft and is supporting the development of Air-One as part of its plan to commercialize its aircraft by 2028. The new airport was built in Coventry, a oily in central England _y and it was ready by the encl of 2021.