Read and translate the text. In addition to their many practical uses, robots are helping our research scientists answer many difficult questions

What can robots do?

In addition to their many practical uses, robots are helping our research scientists answer many difficult questions. Robots help astronomers find and track new stars and lead the way to new and better rockets. They even help scholars figure out the meaning of documents written near the beginning of man's history.

Very few of the robots we have talked about up to now have looked like men. That's because robots are specialists.

There are some robots, however, that are made to look and react like men. That is their specialized task. They are the robots that researchers use to find out what will happen to a human body under a variety of situations.

One of the things that space researchers want to know is what kind of seat is the best for rocket passengers. The blast-off of a rocket will exert tremendous pressures on anyone riding in the rocket. Because of that, a rocket will have to have specially designed seats to protect its passengers. These seats are called "acceleration couches".

To test different kinds of acceleration couches, scientists have built dummies that look and "feel" like men. They have "bones" and "blood" and "flesh". Inside these robots are instruments that tell how much pressure and strain is exerted on each part of the body. These robots are placed on acceleration couches and subjected to pressures like those that would be present in an actual rocket take-off. The measuring devices inside the dummy tell the scientists whether or not the acceleration couch would prevent the blast-off pressure from injuring or killing a man.