2024 Hackaday Supercon Talk: Killing Mosquitoes with Freaking Drones, and Sonar
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Summary
Alex Toussaint has created an incredible device that could spell the end of the ubiquitous mosquito, which kills more than one million people each year.
It consists of a 380-element phased sonar array, into which he has shrunk the usual bulky ultrasonic receivers that are traditionally used for range finding.
He created the device, called LeSonar2, with bigger transducers to put out ultrasound pulses, which an FPGA combines with the outputs from the microphones after intense filtering.
This produces 3D range data that can detect mosquitos in mid-air and differentiate them from other insects such as bees and flies, thanks to their unique micro-doppler return signatures caused by their wing beats.
The device has huge implications for eradicating the diseases, such as malaria, that mosquitos transmit, and could save millions of lives.
