Pool Watch Swimmers can drown in busy swimming pools when lifeguards(救生员) fail to notice that they are in trouble. The Royal

admin2011-01-22  27

问题                                 Pool Watch
   Swimmers can drown in busy swimming pools when lifeguards(救生员) fail to notice that they are in trouble. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents says that on average 15 people drown in British pools each year, but more suffer major injury after getting into difficulties. Now a French company has developed an artificial intelligence system called Poseidon that sounds the alarm when it sees someone in danger of drowning.
   When a swimmer sinks towards the bottom of the pool, the new system sends an alarm signal to a poolside(游泳池边) monitoring station and a lifeguard’s pager. In trials(试验)at a pool in Ancenis, near Nantes, it saved a life within just a few months, says Alistair McQuade, a spokesman for its maker, Poseidon Technologies.
   Poseidon keeps watch through a network of underwater and overheard video cameras. AI software analyses the images to work out swimmers trajectories(轨道). To do this reliably, it has to tell the difference between a swimmer and the shadow of someone being cast onto the bottom or side of the pool. "The underwater environment. Is a very dynamic one, with many shadows and reflections dancing around, " says McQuade.
   The software does this by "projecting" a shape in its field of view onto an image of the far wall of the pool. It does the same with an image from another camera viewing the shape from a different angle. If the two projections are in the same position, the shape is identified as a shadow and is ignored. But if they are different, the shape is a swimmer and so the system follows its trajectory.
   "To pick out potential drowning victims, anyone in the water who starts to descend slowly is added to the software’s "pre-alert" list," says McQuade. Swimmers who then stay immobile on the pool bottom for 5 seconds or more are considered in danger of drowning. Poseidon double-cheeks that the image really is of a swimmer, not a shadow, by seeing whether it obscures the pool’s floor texture when viewed from overhead (在头顶上). If so, it alerts the lifeguard, showing the swimmer’s location on a poolside screen.
   The first full-scale Poseidon system will be officially opened next week at a pool in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. One man who is impressed with the idea is Travor Baylis, inventor of the clockwork(时钟机构) radio. Baylis runs a company that installs swimming pools — and he was once an underwater escapologist (表演脱身术的人) with a circus. "I say full marks to them if this works and can save lives, " he says. But he adds that any local authority spending £30,000-plus on a Poseidon system ought to be investing similar amounts in teaching children to swim.
The word "considered" in paragraph 5 could be best replaced by

选项 A、thought.
B、rated.
C、regarded.
D、believed.

答案B

解析 该词为consider的过去分词,动词consider意思是“考虑;认为”,和“rate”与“regard”意思相近,但是“regard”需要和as连用,因此这里只能和rate替换,故选B。
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