Notes：本视频时长约8分钟，记忆难度较高，内容涉及较多农业相关术语。建议至少练习三遍，顺序：
- 第一遍，只听不看稿，概括主旨。重点抓住：什么是agribots，为什么需要agribots，agribots如何用于除草，以及agribots未来的可能应用。
- 按照所给分段做第一遍交传/同传练习。注意专业名词的准确性，如tricolon、weed、herbicide、microdosing、electricuting等。
- 练后复盘，并看着原文完成第二遍练习（也可直接做视译）：
Agribots
原文
Hello. Before I start my speech, I’d like to just give you some terms that I’ll be mentioning. I’ll make reference to a tricolon, but I’ll explain what that is in the speech. I’ll also be mentioning President Abraham Lincoln and Julius Caesar, hopefully you know who those people are. So, I’ll get started now.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you’re used to listening to speeches or writing speeches, you might know that there’s a rhetorical device called atricolon.This means that you use three words, three phrases, or three clauses to get your point to cross.
You probably already know sometricolons, although you might not know that you know them.Let me give you a few examples.//
The United States has given us life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. President Abraham Lincoln specifically made reference to government of the people, by the people, for the people.
If you ever find yourself in court, you will be asked for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Today though, I want to talk to you about Tarm, Dick, and Harry.If you haven’t heard of them yet, don’t worry, you soon will,especially if you’re from an agricultural background or if you have any connections with farming at all.//
Tarm, Dick and Harry are Agribots, agricultural robots.They’ve been developed in Britain and it’s expected that they will be ready for commercial production later this year.
Initially, Tom, dick and Harry will be used for weeding of crops, but other potential uses are in the pipeline.
Before I get to that though, why would a farmer want to use an agribotfor weeding? Why weeding specifically? //
Well, firstly, weeding is essential in order to maximize crop yields.Weeding though, is a task that has become more difficult for farmers.Many plants are resistant already or are becoming resistant to herbicides, probably because of overuse of those herbicides.Herbicides themselves are banned now in many cases,and even if afarmer is allowed to use herbicides, many of them don’t want to,because consumers nowadays want organic produce, even though organic produce is generally 65% more expensive than non-organic. But that’s a topic for another day. //
Let me stick to the weeding for a moment.If you’re a farmer then and you need to weed, what are your choices?
Well, you could use manual labour, of course.But that’s costly. Additionally, labour shortagesnow mean that even if a farmer is willing to pay somebody, they might not be able to find a person who’s willing to hitch a mechanical holeto the back of a tractor and weed a field for them.This is where Tom, Dick and Harry enter the picture.They will do the weeding for you. //
Now, how does a robot successfully weed?
Well, there are a few distinct steps.The first step is that the agribot obviously has to be able to distinguish a weed from the plant, from what’s actually growing.
Thanks to developments in computer vision, this task is becoming easier.AI is getting progressively better at identifying images. You may even have an APP on your phone that allows you to identify plants or flowers just from a photograph.That’s the first step then to actually identify the weed. //
The second step, once the weed has been identified,is that the weed has to be killed.The agribot essentially kills the weed by electrocuting it.
How this works is: the wheels of the agribot work like an electrode to make contact with the ground, and then a second electrode is moved to make contact with the wheat.This creates a circuit which in turn generates heat, which in turn kills the weed all the way from stem to root.The weed doesn’t even need to be removed from the soil, it can just be left there to decompose naturally back into the ground.//
Anotheradvantage of this approach is that the soil isn’t disturbed in any way and the useful microbes in the soil aren’t harmed.
Work on using agribots for weeding is already pretty far advanced.Now, it’s not perfect, there are still some issues.For example, the identification of some weeds is a little bit complicated. Some weeds look like cereal cropsand that can make it difficult for the agribot to distinguish between the weed and the crop.//
Additionally, some crops, again,mostly cereal crops, tend to be grown quite densely together in rows. Vegetables tend to have a little bit more space, but cereal crops tend to be grown quite densely together and that means that it can sometimes be difficult for the agribot to even access the weed.
All of that being said though, these agribot developers are very confident that they will be ready to go into commercial production by August of this year.Weeding, though, is only the first frontier for these agribots.//
Developers say that in the future, agribots could also be used to apply precise amounts of fertilizer to a plant.This is a process known as microdosingand it essentially means that plants get personalized care.
For the farmer, it means rather than having to spray fertilizer over an entire field, an agribot could apply fertilizer in microdoses to the plants that really need it. //
This targeted application offertilizer,would obviously mean that the farmer would save money because they are using less fertilizer, and it hopefully would also mean that crop yieldswould increase.It’s a win-win for the farmer.
Another possible future application for the agribots is the harvesting of crops.Crops like tomatoes, asparagus, lettuce, cauliflower, these and many other crops could be harvested by agribots that were specifically developed to harvest that particular crop.//
Agribotscould specialize then in a particular crop or in a particular growing location. That could be a field, for example, a vineyard or an orchard.The bottom line is, ladies and gentlemen, that these agribots are here to stay.
I am convinced that as AI advances, these robots will become more and more sophisticated and they’ll be able to do a whole range of things that they’re not able to do to today. //
Who knows? Maybe one day they will even have the power of speech.If that comes to pass, those agribots might like a tricolonof their own to describe the progress they’ve made in our world.I’d like to suggest one to them at one that’s attributed to Julia Caesar and that’s “veni,vidi, vici.”
Thank you.//
10个月宝宝每天需要喝多少奶粉？
