Ok, it doesn't actually drive around yet (version 2?) but it targets mosquitos with a laser, causing them to explode into a ball of flames.
Article: Scientists Build Anti-Mosquito Laser
The anti-mosquito laser was originally introduced by astrophysicist Lowell Wood in the early 1980s, but the idea never took off. More recently, former Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold revived the laser idea when Bill Gates asked him to explore new ways of combating malaria.
Now, astrophysicist Jordin Kare from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Wood, Myhrvold, and other experts have developed a handheld laser that can locate individual mosquitoes and kill them one by one. The developers hope that the technology might be used to create a laser barrier around a house or village that could kill or blind the insects. Alternatively, flying drones equipped with anti-mosquito lasers could track the insects with radar and then sweep the sky with the laser.
The researchers are tuning the strength of the laser so that it kills mosquitoes without harming other insects or, especially, people. The system can even distinguish between males and females by the frequency of their wing movements, which may be important since only females spread the parasite.
In experiments, the system could target mosquitoes with a flashlight, and then uses a zoom lens to feed the data to the computer, which fires at the insect. Each time the laser strikes a mosquito, the computer makes a gunshot sound. When the mosquito is hit, it bursts into flame and falls to the ground, and a thin plume of smoke rises.
The anti-mosquito laser is just one of many novel ways to kill the disease-carrying insects, in addition to the conventional strategy of vaccinating humans. Other ideas include devices that disrupt the mosquitoes' senses of sight, smell, and heat; feeding them poisoned blood; infecting them with a genetically altered bacterium; and creating a malaria-free mutant to overtake the natural mosquitoes.
If I just had access to a powerful enough laser, I could totally make my own sentry. Here is a kid who made one that fires a paintball gun. All you need is a laptop, a couple of servo motors, a camera, and either matlab or labview.
To produce a laser beam powerful enough to make mozzies burst into flames immediately will definately hurt people, or at the very least a fire hazard. Alternatively, if the beam is weaker, some sophisticated tracking device will need to be built to follow the movement of a mosquito and sustain the beam, which is highly cost-ineffective.
A much bigger version of this is already being tested..Google YAL-1.
The laser can be very weak. It has to boil a mosquto-intestine (kill), wrinkle a wing (immobilize) or disable a sensory organ permanently (blind). Burning it to ashes in an instant is overkill though more satisfying.. With weak Lasers will only be dangerous to humans with a direct hit in the eye maybe.
Little known fact, but humans have a vestigial 'laser resistance' that was useless for the last couple thousand years because after the ice age ended the ozone layer slowly rebuilt and now blocks out most of the harmful cosmic rays.
On March 18 2009 20:19 potchip wrote: To produce a laser beam powerful enough to make mozzies burst into flames immediately will definately hurt people, or at the very least a fire hazard. Alternatively, if the beam is weaker, some sophisticated tracking device will need to be built to follow the movement of a mosquito and sustain the beam, which is highly cost-ineffective.
A much bigger version of this is already being tested..Google YAL-1.
My thoughts exactly. Not to mention the extreme difficulty of making it only target female misquitos. Africas eco system is already fragile enough.
Well not so much the hazard or hurting people but the highly cost inffective. Unless of course you want a feel good, media friendly project and you're a high tec software/technology mogul. And your wife is a bleeding heart save the world type person and you want to make her happy too. Oh wait!
I really wouldn't take this idea too seriously. I doubt it will ever be operational.
On March 18 2009 20:19 potchip wrote: To produce a laser beam powerful enough to make mozzies burst into flames immediately will definately hurt people, or at the very least a fire hazard. Alternatively, if the beam is weaker, some sophisticated tracking device will need to be built to follow the movement of a mosquito and sustain the beam, which is highly cost-ineffective.
A much bigger version of this is already being tested..Google YAL-1.
wow so they are already getting into SDI? I always appreciated the idea, so good on them .
On March 18 2009 18:56 brambolius wrote: i have seen enough movies to know this kind of thing can only go horribly wrong.
I, Robot? :D
But seriously, fuck mosquitos.. in the summer they seem to love me and argh they are so annoying when im trying to sleep + the next day when I wake up and am itchy all over and have these repulsive little bites all over me =[
On March 18 2009 17:53 fight_or_flight wrote: If I just had access to a powerful enough laser, I could totally make my own sentry. Here is a kid who made one that fires a paintball gun. All you need is a laptop, a couple of servo motors, a camera, and either matlab or labview.
'Tch. Needs more firepower. I don't want to hear about destroying individual mosquitos; I want to hear about destroying forests full of mosquitos! Nevermind the collateral. This is serious business damn it!
On March 18 2009 20:19 potchip wrote: To produce a laser beam powerful enough to make mozzies burst into flames immediately will definately hurt people, or at the very least a fire hazard. Alternatively, if the beam is weaker, some sophisticated tracking device will need to be built to follow the movement of a mosquito and sustain the beam, which is highly cost-ineffective.
A much bigger version of this is already being tested..Google YAL-1.
My thoughts exactly. Not to mention the extreme difficulty of making it only target female misquitos. Africas eco system is already fragile enough.
Well not so much the hazard or hurting people but the highly cost inffective. Unless of course you want a feel good, media friendly project and you're a high tec software/technology mogul. And your wife is a bleeding heart save the world type person and you want to make her happy too. Oh wait!
I really wouldn't take this idea too seriously. I doubt it will ever be operational.
When I look at a technology and ask if it's viable, there are some questions I ask: 1) does it take a large amount of energy, and is therefore inherently expensive? 2) does it require technology which is not available today? 3) are the materials/process required to produce it inherently expensive or exotic?
If the answer is no, then that means that the only thing keeping it from becoming a reality is simply your inability to come up with a clever enough way of doing it.
For example, you could have a ring of weak lasers converge onto a single point in space (thats how they do fusion). Observation lasers could be used calculate the exact point of the mosquito in space. All these could be built onto a single chip. Perhaps a single laser source could be used, and DLP technology be used to cause the split beams to converge.
Perhaps an infrared laser or a UV laser could easily kill mosquitos yet be harmless to humans.
Perhaps a phased array of ultrasound transducers could be used to target a single point in space, in conjunction with a laser sight.
Perhaps you could restrict the drone to target only mosquitos directly above it or directly in front of a brick wall or other inert surface.
On March 19 2009 09:54 Mortality wrote: 'Tch. Needs more firepower. I don't want to hear about destroying individual mosquitos; I want to hear about destroying forests full of mosquitos! Nevermind the collateral. This is serious business damn it!
Its difficult to grasp the power of automation. Like programming, if you can solve the base case (a single mosquito) then you can scale it up enormously.
Actually there are other factors. Think about the upkeep costs for keeping that level of technology functioning properly for example. Especially in a poor uneducated country with limited resources. You'd have to provide salary, room and board for a educated high paying highly technical job.
Whereas with other low tech options that do not require such skilled labor you could find local workers to preform all the necessary tasks. Much much cheaper.
To all the skeptics and naysayers....after slightly more than a year after I posted this thread, here is a guide on how to create a laser defense perimeter around your yard using off-the-shelf parts that will kill mosquitoes. It can even be made to target only female mosquitoes, if you like.
On March 18 2009 16:35 IntoTheWow wrote: They should build it as a FPS, eradicate malaria by playing!
You just know people online would be targeting children and small animals though.
It's like Ender's Game. You THINK you're targeting mosquitoes, but you're actually fighting a war in the Middle East.
Ender's Game <3
Man it's disappointing to see that this is old news - it means they haven't uprisen and rebelled against their human tyrants yet, malfunctioning to instead make people burst into flame ;(
On May 07 2010 15:27 fight_or_flight wrote: To all the skeptics and naysayers....after slightly more than a year after I posted this thread, here is a guide on how to create a laser defense perimeter around your yard using off-the-shelf parts that will kill mosquitoes. It can even be made to target only female mosquitoes, if you like.
I just read it and I think it's pretty cool and it would be so great to have one when holding a bbq. Too bad it's so expensive to build haha.
On May 07 2010 16:28 MercerX wrote: ya i wanna see a video of it or i don't give a fck
While there isn't a video of it actually targeting and firing at a mosquito, there is a short video of what happens to the mosquito when it's hit by the laser at different frequencies.
On May 07 2010 17:23 Ganondorf wrote: Yeah all that theory, they say they bought all the components, yet no video (only one where they were just testing the laser). So it failed to work ?
Video's probably coming up in 2011, or 2087 from future people mocking our ignorance and skepticism. Don't risk it.
On May 07 2010 21:35 jello_biafra wrote: If this thing can take down wasps and all other insects, then I'd be well up for it! (mosquitoes, thankfully, don't exist in this country)
Are you kidding me? There are 33 species of known mosquitoes in the British Isles.
On May 07 2010 21:35 jello_biafra wrote: If this thing can take down wasps and all other insects, then I'd be well up for it! (mosquitoes, thankfully, don't exist in this country)
Are you kidding me? There are 33 species of known mosquitoes in the British Isles.
Title made me think of the Point Defence Drone in SC2.
But killing mosquitos with lasers, omfg that is so bad ass. I hate mosquitos so bad and this would be a amazing way to deal with those litte fuckers. I hope they create something similar for Bees/hornets if this takes off. >
On May 07 2010 23:55 KinosJourney2 wrote: Title made me think of the Point Defence Drone in SC2.
But killing mosquitos with lasers, omfg that is so bad ass. I hate mosquitos so bad and this would be a amazing way to deal with those litte fuckers. I hope they create something similar for Bees/hornets if this takes off. >
bees make you your food... you sure you want to be killing em by the hundreds? O.O
i would guess that this would cost a lot of money to make per laser shooting thang, so it probably wouldn't be quite so cost effective yet...
but for the rich countries, i'm sure their people would be amused by buying one of these babes
On May 08 2010 00:49 UFO wrote: what have they done to you to treat them like that
Give us Malaria?
I know everybody says that if even 1 form of life was removed from the food chain it would be messed up. I of course being ignorant don't care, I think it's worth it to get rid of the blood sucking bastards.
I think the US government needs to channel billions of dollars in funding this. This is really really really important and useful compared to so many other things.
lasers?
How about a fly swatter with smaller openings in it?
On May 08 2010 03:24 Terranist wrote: but what if they learn to adapt to absorb the laser radiation and mutate into those creatures from the godzilla movies!?
Then we're screwed. But until then.... Kill the stupid things!!! I know I would er... someone would find a second use for the laser like annoying your sister from across the room.... >
joking aside, if this works and is cost effective to have multiple units deployed per vilage (or if their range is large enough that you can have one at a highpoint in a village) then this will do wonders for stopping malaria.
sounds like a good drinking game or maybe it's a good ability for the sc2 science vessel called the raven. im pretty sure this is the humble origin of the point defense drone somewhere like 1000 years in the future
oh too bad someone already noted that i guess fuck damn
EPT
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