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Task 1
(class reading)
MS program, Faculty of Mechanics and Technology
compiled by Guzheva E. V.
AUTOMATION
1. Answer the questions:
a).What is the connection between unemployment and automation?
b).Does automation influence human`s health and environment?
c).Can your name any automation tools?
2. Work in pairs. Make the list of advantages and disadvantages of automation.
3. Read the text and compare your ideas with the information from the text.
Automation is the use of control systems and information technologies reducing the
need for human intervention. In the scope of industrialization, automation is a step
beyond mechanization. Whereas mechanization provided human operators with
machinery to assist them with the muscular requirements of work, automation greatly
reduces the need for human sensory and mental requirements as well. Automation
plays an increasingly important role in the world economy and in daily experience.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automation - cite_note-Reference.com-0
Advantages and disadvantages
The main advantages of automation are:
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Replacing human operators in tasks that involve hard physical or monotonous
work.
Replacing humans in tasks that should be done in dangerous environments (i.e.
fire, space, volcanoes, nuclear facilities, underwater, etc.)
Making tasks that are beyond the human capabilities such as handling too heavy
loads, too large objects, too hot or too cold substances or the requirement to
make things too fast or too slow.
Economy improvement. Sometimes and some kinds of automation implies
improves in economy of enterprises, society or most of humankind. For example,
when an enterprise that has invested in automation technology recovers its
investment; when a state or country increases its income due to automation like
Germany or Japan in the 20th Century or when the humankind can use the
internet which in turn use satellites and other automated engines.
The main disadvantages of automation are:
Technology limits. Current technology is unable to automate all the desired tasks.
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Unpredictable development costs. The research and development cost of
automating a process is difficult to predict accurately beforehand. Since this cost
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can have a large impact on profitability, it's possible to finish automating a
process only to discover that there's no economic advantage in doing so.
Initial costs are relatively high. The automation of a new product required a huge
initial investment in comparison with the unit cost of the product, although the cost
of automation is spread in many product batches. The automation of a plant
required a great initial investment too, although this cost is spread in the products
to be produced.
Engineers now can have numerical control over automated devices. The result
has been a rapidly expanding range of applications and human activities.
Computer-aided technologies (or CAx) now serve the basis for mathematical and
organizational tools used to create complex systems. Notable examples of CAx
include Computer-aided design (CAD software) and Computer-aided
manufacturing (CAM software). The improved the design, analysis, and
manufacture of products enabled by CAx has been beneficial for industry.
Information technology, together with industrial machinery and processes, can
assist in the design, implementation, and monitoring of control systems. One
example of an industrial control system is a programmable logic controller (PLC).
PLCs are specialized hardened computers which are frequently used to
synchronize the flow of inputs from (physical) sensors and events with the flow of
outputs to actuators and events.
4. Read the text again and answer the following questions:
1. What is automation?
2. What is its role in our society?
3. Could you name the ways in which automation helps to economy improvement?
4. Is current technology able to automate all the desired tasks?
5. What impact does the research and development cost of automating a process have
on profitability?
5. Match the synonyms:
A: 1.impact 2.requirement 3.substance 4.activity 5.machinery 6.enterprise
7.capability 8.device 9.facility
B: a). mechanism b). machine c). firm d). capacity e). installation f). influence
g)demand h). essence i). liveliness
6. Match an adjective and a noun to make word combinations:
1. nuclear
a. experience
2. dangerous
b. investment
3. programmable
c. machinery
4. initial
d. facilities
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5. industrial
e. controller
6. daily
f. tools
7. mathematical
g. environments
7. Fill in the missing combinations from Ex 6 above:
1. A common storage strategy integrates the inherent granularity of time with a
continuous information stream from ……, where everything is in the right place at
the right time.
2. The company provides marketing and sales representation services in China for
US manufacturers of high-technology medical equipment, mining and other …….
3. You may move into a ……… only with the authorisation of your superior.
4. The US knows Pakistan will never allow monitoring of their ……....
5. The program TouchMaths is the best ………. you can get for your touchscreen
mobile phone.
6. However, the farmer pointed out that rice plantations required a relatively large
……...
7. A ………. is a digital computer used for automation of electromechanical
processes, such as control of machinery on factory assembly lines.
8. Translate into Russian:
Искусственный интеллект – это наука, которая занимается изучением
«интеллекта» различных механизмов, а также раздел информатики, цель которой
создавать эти механизмы. Джон Маккарти, первый, кто ввел этот термин в 1956г.,
называет данное направление "наукой и разработкой создания интеллектуальных
машин." В основе этого направления лежит лозунг, который гласит, что основная
собственность людей, интеллект — мудрость Человека разумного — может быть
так точно описана, что может быть смоделировано машиной. Данная область
поднимает такие философские проблемы, как природа ума и пределы науки,
проблемы, которые рассматривались мифами, беллетристикой и философией,
начиная с давних времен. Искусственный интеллект является предметом
оптимизма, но были и неудачи и, сегодня стал основной частью технологической
промышленности, обеспечивая решение для многих из самых трудных вопросов в
информатике.
9. Make a plan of the text and summarise it.
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Keys.
(текст 1 для МТФ)
1. a) b) .The costs of automation to the environment are different depending on the
technology, product or engine automated. There are automated engines that consume
more energy resources from the Earth in comparison with previous engines and those
that do the opposite too. Hazardous operations, such as oil refining, the manufacturing
of industrial chemicals, and all forms of metal working, were always early contenders for
automation.
c) Different types of automation tools exist:
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ANN - Artificial neural network
DCS - Distributed Control System
HMI - Human Machine Interface
SCADA - Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition
PLC - Programmable Logic Controller
PAC - Programmable automation controller
Instrumentation
Motion control
Robotics
5. 1.f 2.g 3.h 4.i 5.a 6.c 7.d 8.b 9.e
6. :
1-d) nuclear facilities; 2-g) dangerous environment; 3-e) programmable controller;
4-b)initial investment; 5-c) industrial machinery; 6-a)daily experience; 7-f) mathematical
tool
7 1. daily experience 2. industrial machinery 3. dangerous environment 4. nuclear
facilities 5. mathematical tool 6. initial investment 7. programmable controller
VIII. Artificial intelligence (AI) is the intelligence of machines and the branch of
computer science that aims to create it. John McCarthy, who coined the term in 1956,[3]
defines it as "the science and engineering of making intelligent machines." [4]The field
was founded on the claim that a central property of humans, intelligence—the sapience
of Homo sapiens—can be so precisely described that it can be simulated by a
machine.[5] This raises philosophical issues about the nature of the mind and limits of
scientific hubris, issues which have been addressed by myth, fiction and philosophy
since antiquity.[6] Artificial intelligence has been the subject of optimism,[7] but has also
suffered setbacks[8] and, today, has become an essential part of the technology
industry, providing the heavy lifting for many of the most difficult problems in computer
science.[9]
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