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　　The Cave Crawler mining robot

　　Why do human beings still risk their lives under ground and doing one of the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs in the world? It’s an increasingly urgent question,given the recent high-profile(引人注目的)mining accidents in Sago, W. Va., and Huntington, Utah. A small group of engineers and robotics experts envision(展望)a day in the not-too-distant future when robots and other technology do most of the dangerous mining work..

　　One of the first mining robots was developed five years ago at Carnegie-Mellon University’s Robotics Institute. It was called Groundhog and it looked like a golf cart. It used lasers to “see” in dark tunnels and map abandoned mines—some of the most dangerous work in the business.

　　The latest prototype is called Cave Crawler. It’s a bit smaller than Groundhog, and even more advanced. It can take photos and video and has sensors mounted that can detect the presence of dangerous gases. Incredibly, the robot has a real sense of logic. If it comes across an obstacle it gets momentarily confused, it has to think through the process and where to go next, and sometimes it throws a fit just like a real person.

　　The biggest obstacle, though, is cost. The original research project was federally funded, but that money has dried up, and it’s not clear where future funding will come from. Partly for that reason, and partly because of advances in safety, mining is not nearly as dangerous as it was in the past. Since 1990, fatalities have declined by 67 percent, and injuries by 51 percent, according to the National Mining Association.

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