After many months staying at home we're all dreaming of travelling somewhere exciting and stretching our legs. As an oceanographer (海洋学家), I've spent many years developing robots to explore the ocean, and now we're putting that technology to use in our JASON Project, a program that's designed to inspire students and get them interested in science, technology, engineering and math. We bring kids together and send back to them on large screens our live explorations of large areas of the globe. Not only are the kids observers, but they can operate robots moving across the area while broadcasting images back to them. The kids have the sensation (感受) of really being at the site with us.
I believe advances in robot technology will one day be the key to a new kind of travel. In the next 10 or 15years, people will have rooms in their houses that will be able to simulate (模拟) other environments. I like to call these rooms "home domes"—small theaters with screens and advanced equipment that can reproduce the sights, sounds, smells, and feel of a desert, or a forest. With these rooms, I can see a market for travel robots located in countries around the world. You could rent (租) a robot working in a rain forest, then go into your home dome, where you yourself operate the robot's movements. The equipment in the room will receive the sensations in the robot's environment and simulate them for you.
Today, much of the world's population never travels more than 50 or 60miles from home. And even a person with enough time can see only a part of the earth's sights. But this new way of travel will cost so much less in both time and money and allow people to see a lot more of the world. And simulated travel will also help protect our planet. You can't take large groups of tourists to look at Dian Fossey's gorillas (大猩猩). But a small robot, with no animal smell, can get very close to a gorilla and send the sights, sounds, and smells back to a million people.
