Практическое задание по дисциплине «Английский язык» для ЕКурсы

Перевод текстов. TEXT 1 AUTONOMOUS CARS To be able to drive safely and reliably, autonomous cars need to have a comprehensive understanding of what’s going on around them. They need to recognize other cars, trucks, motorcycles, bikes, humans, traffic lights, street signs, and everything else that may end up on or near a road. They also have to do this in all kinds of weather and lighting conditions, which is why most (if not all) companies developing autonomous cars are spending a ludicrous (but necessary) amount of time and resources collecting data in an attempt to gain experience with every possible situation. In most cases, this technique depends on humans making annotations to enormous sets of data in order to train machine learning algorithms: hundreds or thousands of people looking at snapshots or videos taken by cars driving down streets, and drawing boxes around vehicles and road signs and labeling them, over and over. Roboticists tend to be wary of doing too much in simulation because more often than not, they tend to succeed. That is, because of the way that simulations simplify the real world, making things work in simulation offers very few guarantees that the same things will work once you try to do them outside the simulation. This gets particularly bad when doing anything that involves physics, but photorealistic graphics are much easier to convincingly fake, largely thanks to the gaming industry. The appeal of training in simulation is threefold: First, you can do it much faster and far less expensively than running real cars on real roads taking real video. Secondly, in simulation the annotation is (mostly) already done for you, since the game knows exactly what objects it’s creating. And thirdly, simulation lets you generate whatever kinds of conditions and situations you like, as often as you like. In simulation, you can make it rain or snow or anything else, and you can even use the exact same scene for training under lots of different conditions. TEXT 2 ACTIVE SAFATY TECHNOLOGIES Volvo is taking the next, inevitable step toward autonomy with a pilot test involving 100 citizen drivers and new cars in 2017 on limited-access highways on the outskirts of the company’s headquarters in Gothenburg, Sweden. Volvo could offer the feature in its new cars by 2020. The limited-autonomy system, which relies on laser guidance, cameras, and GPS, will be distributed to Volvo customers — not test drivers — in Gothenburg in about two years’ time. Vision 2020 is Volvo’s commitment to eliminating deaths and serious injuries in its brand-new cars by that model year. New safety features demonstrated in the 2016 Volvo XC90 at its headquarters in early December are part of the ecosystem designed to meet the goal. The program there began with a crash test to demonstrate the XC90’s Run Off-Road Protection Package, which includes electrical seat-belt retractors that automatically tighten when the front camera detects that the CUV has left the pavement despite driver warnings to keep to the road. The vehicle’s seats have energy-absorbing spring pieces in the lower cushions to prevent spinal injuries. The piece is an unusually simple, non-electronic solution and it can be replaced even if the original seat is retained in the repairs. The vehicle’s brake pedal also retracts in the case of a hard crash. A new driver alert system, also part of the standard City Safe, suggests on the instrument panel when the driver appears to be growing tired and uses the GPS system to find the closest rest stop. Like the latest Mercedes-Benz S-Class, and others, the 2016 Volvo XC90 — ahead of the 2020 model-year expansion of the system — will feature some very light autonomy that allows limited self-steering for very short periods of time so long as the driver has his or her hands lightly on the wheel. The 2016 Volvo XC90 off-road crash in Gothenburg was less dramatic than most tests, except for the part where the big new CUV took a bit of air after bouncing into an embankment. It suffered under-chassis damage, lost a few bits from the lower fascia, and blew all its airbags, but looked drivable. Volvo’s City Safe feature, which warns drivers of a potential crash, also has been improved to flash a dashboard light, beep an audio warning, and apply the brakes to prevent from hitting a bicyclist or running down a pedestrian. The feature is standard across the model range. The company says it has made big improvements in pedestrian and bicycle recognition. Vision 2020 is an admirable goal, even if you’re already growing tired of too much intervention of this kind. Volvo says there won’t be undue intervention so long as the driver is paying attention. The latest City Safe also keeps the brakes applied for an additional second if the system detects that the driver is trying to turn left into traffic too soon, ahead of an oncoming car. TEXT 3 FIXED SPEED CAMERAS In the Nordic region, Fixed Speed Cameras (FSC) was first introduced in Norway in 1988. The system consists of a so-called starling box which measures the speed of vehicles at a specific point on the road. If the speed is too high, the starling box takes a photo of the car and driver, and the photo is used for documentation when the fine is issued. The system is only active periodically, but motorists do not know when. For many years after its introduction, there were old-fashioned wet film cameras in the starling boxes, and these cameras were moved around among different stands. Today, FSC in Norway is provided with permanent digital cameras which transfer the photos to the police via wireless communication. The cameras are still not turned on permanently because the administrative processing of the images is quite expensive. In 2009, a one-year study with ten FSCs was completed in Denmark. After completion, the test was evaluated. In the evaluation, the effect on road users’ speed was examined. In the direction with control, the average speed at the rural point with FSC decreased by 9.1 km/h on weekdays (12%) and by 12.1 km/h at weekends (14%). On urban roads, speed decreased slightly less, 10% and 13% respectively. Speed measurements a few hundred meters after the FSC locations showed that the effect had almost disappeared. FSC is typically placed on sections with increased accident risk. A section of some kilometres is posted with a sign telling the drivers that the section is photo monitored, and the camera is placed at a random point of the section. The idea is that the road user should know that the section is monitored, but not exactly where and when, and thereby be encouraged to slow down at any time of day. The result has been that ever since the introduction of FSC drivers with local knowledge have made use of “kangaroo driving”-behaviour where speed is decreased slightly before the camera and increased again immediately after. Today, kangaroo driving has become possible for all road users as the exact position of the FSC has been downloaded onto navigation devices. This allows all users simply just to slow down seconds before passing the camera.