The world’s newest mosquito assassin just scored its first air-to-air kill. The victim, unfortunately, was an innocent moth. French startup Tornyol released the bug into a small white room, and its 40-gram drone — roughly the weight of a golf ball — locked on, gave chase, and ground the fluttering insect into bits with its propellers.
The kill method is decidedly old-fashioned, but the targeting is not. Like a bat, the drone hunts by sound, emitting ultrasonic pulses and listening with an array of 380 smartphone microphones for a mosquito’s telltale wingbeat. Wasps beat their wings slowly, fruit flies faster, and mosquitoes faster still — distinctions the system must learn so it doesn’t shred harmless bees and butterflies, according to founder Alex Toussaint.
There are limits. The drone flies for only three minutes before returning to its base to recharge, a process that can take 30 minutes — ample time for any surviving mosquitoes to regroup. Still, the stakes are serious: mosquito-borne malaria killed an estimated 597,000 people across 83 countries in 2023, according to the CDC.
The company plans to map breeding grounds and, eventually, patrol up to five acres per drone, with preorders open at $1,100 or $50 a month. And the whole crusade traces back to a distinctly lazier ambition: Toussaint says the technology began with his dream of getting a can of soda from the fridge to the couch without standing up.
Briefs and quick reads selected and edited by The Smart Reader’s editorial team.
