VOA慢速英语--美国弗吉尼亚理工大学使用无人机送快餐

AS IT IS 2016-09-14 Drones to Deliver Fast Food to Virginia Tech University 美国弗吉尼亚理工大学使用无人机送快餐

Students in the American state of Virginia will soon be able to order burritos carried by unmanned aircraft.

The food delivery service is starting at the Virginia Polytechnic¹ Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia.

This will be one of the first tests of a commercial drone delivery service in the United States.

Virginia Tech’s Project Wing is partnering with the restaurant company Chipotle Mexican Grill² on the experiment.

Chipotle partnership³

Project Wing is part of X, a laboratory once known as Google X. It researches and tests unmanned aerial vehicles, also known as drones. The lab studies the use of drones to transport food, medicine and other goods.

After the students place their order, the burritos will be made at a food truck and loaded onto a drone. The aircraft will fly the burritos to a pickup⁴ area, then lower them to the ground.

The drones are able to fly like a plane or hover⁵ in the air, like a helicopter. The flights will be limited to an area on Virginia Tech property away from the main campus grounds, according to the university’s Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership. The partnership is one of six groups approved by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to carry out unmanned drone tests.

Only a small group of people at Virginia Tech will be able to use the service at first, according to the director of the partnership, Mark Blanks.

“It is real customers that are working and need lunch and want it delivered by drone,” he said.

Mark Warner of Virginia serves in the U.S. Senate. He said the research will help improve the development of unmanned aircraft technology.

“The commercial use of drones for package and food delivery in U.S. airspace is rapidly becoming a reality,” he said.

Research important to drone development

In addition to Google’s parent Alphabet, other companies are testing drones as a way to make deliveries faster and more efficient. These include Amazon, UPS, FedEx and Dominos Pizza.

The FAA recently estimated there will be about 600,000 commercial drones operating in the United States within one year. The agency made the estimate while announcing new rules for commercial drone operators.

The tests are seen as important because they can demonstrate the ability to deliver fresh, hot food without involving humans.

Virginia Tech said the burrito project will explore food delivery with limitations such as time, amount, temperature, frequency and packaging.

“This is the most complex delivery flight operation that I am aware of that’s occurred on U.S. soil,” Blanks told Bloomberg.

Words in This Story

burrito – n. a Mexican food that consists of a flour tortilla that is rolled or folded around a filling?

delivery – n. the act of taking something to a person or place

commercial – adj. of or related to the buying and selling of goods and services

drone – n. ?a small flying machine flown remotely

hover – v. to stay moving in the air without much movement from side to side

efficient – adj. producing desired results without wasting materials, time or energy

frequency – n. how often something happens

1 polytechnic   

adj.各种工艺的，综合技术的；n.工艺(专科)学校；理工(专科)学校

参考例句：

• She was trained as a teacher at Manchester Polytechnic.她在曼彻斯特工艺专科学校就读，准备毕业后做老师。
• When he was 17,Einstein entered the Polytechnic Zurich,Switzerland,where he studied mathematics and physics.17岁时，爱因斯坦进入了瑞士苏黎士的专科学院，学习数学和物理学。

2 grill   

n.烤架，铁格子，烤肉；v.烧，烤，严加盘问

参考例句：

• Put it under the grill for a minute to brown the top.放在烤架下烤一分钟把上面烤成金黄色。
• I'll grill you some mutton.我来给你烤一些羊肉吃。

3 partnership   

n.合作关系，伙伴关系

参考例句：

• The company has gone into partnership with Swiss Bank Corporation.这家公司已经和瑞士银行公司建立合作关系。
• Martin has taken him into general partnership in his company.马丁已让他成为公司的普通合伙人。

4 pickup   

n.拾起，获得

参考例句：

• I would love to trade this car for a pickup truck.我愿意用这辆汽车换一辆小型轻便卡车。||The luck guy is a choice pickup for the girls.那位幸运的男孩是女孩子们想勾搭上的人。

5 hover   

vi.翱翔，盘旋；徘徊；彷徨，犹豫

参考例句：

• You don't hover round the table.你不要围着桌子走来走去。
• A plane is hover on our house.有一架飞机在我们的房子上盘旋。