Imagine a robot. What comes to your mind first? A machine stronger than the human body? However, this same quality is now causing a big problem—it’s creating tons of long-lasting e-waste that could flood our planet. What if, instead, the machines we use were designed to break down and disappear—just as living things do?
For a study published in Science Advances, researchers made a robotic arm and a controller using materials from animals and plants. These materials are strong enough to work but can easily break down in a natural environment. After testing, both parts were gone in soil within weeks.
Biodegradable (可生物降解的) robotics often falls under the umbrella of soft robotics, which takes ideas from nature. “This field started in materials science and chemistry rather than traditional robots that come from mechanical (机械的) engineering,” says Florian Hartmann, a materials scientist from Germany. However, many early soft robotics models still used man-made materials that cause pollution.
Wei, a scientist who studies natural materials in Hangzhou, worked together with his friend Zhang, a robotics engineer in Shanghai, to build robots for the new study. They started with cellulose (纤维素) taken from cotton. Then, they added glycerol (甘油) to make a new material that is soft and easy to change shapes. After that they allowed it to dry so it became strong, “Cellulose is cheap and easy to work with,” says Wei. They found that the controller and the robotic arm stood up to both heavy use and a week of inactivity (不工作). Finally, they buried (埋) them both in a hole. ▲
Wei and Zhang expect that robots like these can be used to deal with dangerous waste and then disappear naturally. They also hope that such robots can help doctors in operations and then safely break down inside the body.
However, it’s important to note that the technology is still in very early stages. “If we truly want to have a biodegradable robot,” Hartmann says, “we also need to make sure its electronics and power parts are biodegradable.”
32．How does the writer start the passage?
A．By listing numbers.B．By telling stories.
C．By raising questions.D．By comparing facts.
33．What is special about the robotic arm and the controller in Paragraph 2?
A．They are green.B．They are hard.
C．They are talented.D．They are cheap.
34．Which of the following sentences can be put in the ▲ ?
A．Robots are made to help people in different ways.
B．But these two parts could not break down underground.
C．Researchers are still thinking about how to solve the problem.
D．Within eight weeks these two parts were almost completely gone.
35．What can we learn from the passage?
A．Soft robots are widely used to clean up e-waste.
B．Soft robots have to rest for a week after heavy use.
C．The designing of soft robots borrows ideas from nature.
D．Mechanical engineering offers new ways to run soft robots.
