Florida, are going to use drones to fight mosquitoes

The first launch of the Guardian bird Maveric drone in Florida.

It seems that unmanned aerial vehicles will soon be used in many areas of our lives. Rather, already used. Relatively recently, an experiment was conducted where quadrocopters delivered beer through the air to fans at the stadium. Now unmanned aerial vehicles are going to use to fight mosquitoes. The fight will be held in Florida, USA.

This region is warm and humid, there are many wetlands, which are an ideal place to maintain the prosperous life cycle of mosquitoes. The larvae of these insects grow in water, after which the adult mosquito goes on its first flight, tearing the shell of the pupa (the latter rises to the surface of the water, of course, mosquitoes do not know how to swim). The best way to deal with buzzing bloodsuckers is to destroy the larvae in the water. In Soviet times (I don’t know how it is now), water was poured with kerosene, the film of which, which forms on the surface of the water, did not allow the larvae to breathe, and they died en masse. True, even a good half of aquatic living creatures died, which, oddly enough, also needs oxygen to maintain its life cycle.
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But back to the robots. The unmanned aircraft, visible in the announcement photo, is very similar to the “Guardian Bird” (those who have not read the Sheckley, be sure to read). However, this "bird" will not be able to hit mosquitoes or larvae with an electric discharge, as described in the NF Sheckley story. No, drones are used to get an infrared map of a region. The warmer the pond, the more mosquito larvae in it. And scientists / health services will go exactly to such places to fight the bloodsucker larvae.

Created by UAVs Condor Aerial, and the name of such a device - Maveric. It may well be that in the near future, “birds” will also be equipped with some “anti-larval weapons”, such as chemicals that will be dumped into reservoirs. It sounds less and less fantastic. So far no one talks about this, of course, but why not suppose something like that?

The experiment itself will be conducted at the end of this month.

Here is a demonstration of the work of the UAV Maveric (video does not apply to the current project, but it gives an opportunity to evaluate the "skills" of robots):



Via IEEE Spectrum