This Drone Hunts Mosquitoes

A tiny drone designed to hunt mosquitoes has already made its first midair kill.

The only problem: the victim was a moth.

French startup Tornyol released the insect into a small white room, where its 40-gram drone — about the weight of a golf ball — detected it, chased it, and struck it with its propellers.

The method is simple.

The targeting system is not.

Like a bat, the drone uses sound to find flying insects.

It emits ultrasonic pulses and listens with an array of 380 small microphones for the distinctive sound of wingbeats.

Different insects beat their wings at different speeds.

Wasps, fruit flies and mosquitoes all produce different patterns, and the system must learn those differences if it is going to target mosquitoes without hitting harmless insects such as bees and butterflies.

Founder Alex Toussaint said that distinction is one of the key challenges.

The drone also has a major limitation: battery life.

It can fly for only about three minutes before returning to its base to recharge.

That recharge can take about 30 minutes.

Still, the problem Tornyol is trying to solve is serious.

Mosquito-borne diseases remain a major global health threat. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figure cited for this report, malaria killed an estimated 597,000 people across 83 countries in 2023.

Tornyol says it eventually hopes its drones can map mosquito breeding areas and patrol up to five acres each.

The company has also opened preorders at a reported price of $1,100, or $50 per month.

For now, the technology is still in development, and avoiding the wrong targets may be just as important as finding the right ones.

The idea also began in a much less serious place.

Toussaint has said the project grew out of his desire to build a system that could bring him a can of soda from the refrigerator to the couch without requiring him to get up.

It has since turned into something far more ambitious:

a flying robot built to hunt one of the world’s deadliest pests.