New Laser Zaps Mosquitoes in SlowMotion | National Geographic

National Geographic · 2.6M views · 2010 · 2:22

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Medicine & infectious diseaseEveryday physics & science demosnewsdated

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN commenters bring it up as proof that laser mosquito defense is technically feasible, in threads about DIY pest-zapping projects.

What it is

A short National Geographic piece showing a laser system that tracks and kills mosquitoes, filmed in slow motion, as part of anti-malaria efforts. It comes from Intellectual Ventures' 2010 work.

Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2021 to 2022.

What Hacker News said

Cites mLuby · 2021-06 · on “How many flies are in my apartment?”

I want a mosquito-killing turret [1] that you could put in your bedroom and sleep in peace. Turns out one exists [2] (in theory—no commercial product a decade later), but the one I was thinking of would use microphones rather than cameras [3] to detect the bloody suckers. Thing is, I can't find any prior research or even hints that people have considered this approach. (The closest I can find is an app [4] that detects a mosquito from ≤10cm away.) Here are some of my guesses for why it's not been done: A. Maybe it's too difficult to distinguish mosquito buzz/whine from background noise, even when filtering in only known mosquito frequencies (~400Hz [5]). B. Maybe it's too slow to sweep a roo

Cites smiley1437 · 2022-01 · on “Predict 3D position of flying bugs and pest to shoot down them with a laser”

Intellectual Ventures made it seem promising enough in 2010, the slow-motion shootdowns are pretty amazing [this video] Guess there were some obstacles that couldn't be overcome

Critical janoc · 2021-03 · on “Raspberry Pi for Kill Mosquitoes by Laser”

Good luck detecting a mosquito optically from a distance of several meters using a cheap camera and Raspberry Pi. Oh and you want to do from a moving drone. That will certainly make it work! Just look at the images in the article - the guy's best result was detecting a black speck appearing on a nearby white wall with some 60-70% reliability (based on his own numbers). So you would be missing a lot of mosquitoes - but will be happy firing the laser at random shadows and what not. And that was in a completely stationary setup and controlled lab conditions, i.e. not at all something resembling a typical poorly lit room! This article is BS. Preprints are not peer reviewed (i.e. nobody has check