TECH

Tornyol: the mosquito-hunting drone

A mosquito is an awkward target for a machine. It is tiny, fast, difficult to see and constantly changing direction. Now, a Paris startup has shown a 40-gram drone chasing a flying insect through the air and striking it without a human guiding the final move. The catch is important: the insect was a moth, not a mosquito. The demonstration is a real engineering milestone, but it is still far from proving that tiny drones can reliably clear mosquitoes from homes, gardens or cities.

A palm-sized drone has just crossed a strange engineering threshold: it hunted down a flying insect and struck it in mid-air without a pilot guiding the final move.

The Paris startup behind it calls the test a major step toward automated mosquito control. But there is an important detail. The insect was a moth, not a mosquito. And the demonstration used some tracking and computing equipment that will eventually need to be packed into a much smaller autonomous system.

Imagine entering your bedroom at night without having to search for a mosquito hiding behind the curtain, clap your hands in the dark, or immediately resort to repellents and insecticides. Instead, a small device begins monitoring the room on its own, identifies suspicious movement, and gives chase. The concept sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie, but it is already being developed for home use—bringing with it challenges as fascinating as the technology itself.

The proposal combines sensors, artificial intelligence, and autonomous navigation to turn a small gadget into a sort of aerial home sentinel.

Mosquitoes are small, fast, and hard to spot. To make matters worse, they can quickly vanish from sight, especially in bedrooms, living rooms, and other spaces cluttered with obstacles.

It is precisely this problem that a new technology aims to tackle in an unconventional way.

Instead of dispersing chemicals into the air or relying on stationary traps, the system uses a small flying device capable of navigating the space autonomously. Before starting, the user defines the area to be protected, allowing the device to map out the environment.

From there, it can conduct short patrols and analyze its surroundings. Artificial intelligence comes into play to distinguish a mosquito from other objects or movements in the room.

Upon identifying a potential target, the device adjusts its flight path and attempts to track the insect in mid-air.

The company behind the project is Tornyol; it is banking on this specific combination of sensors, AI, and autonomous movement to create an alternative to traditional methods.

The device weighs approximately 40 grams and is designed to operate in a home environment without requiring constant supervision.

The concept is simple to grasp but extremely complex to execute: creating a machine small enough to maneuver inside a house yet intelligent enough to track down one of the smallest and most unpredictable enemies in existence. The technology is impressive in demonstrations, but there is a significant limitation that could determine whether this futuristic idea actually works in everyday life.

Despite all the technology involved, there is a very concrete obstacle: power.

Currently, each charge allows for about three minutes of flight time. Afterward, the device must automatically return to its station and spend approximately 30 minutes recharging.

This creates a considerable gap between the time the equipment can spend patrolling and the time required to get back into action.

In practice, the system could carry out short patrols throughout the day rather than staying airborne constantly. Even so, this limitation is a key issue the company needs to address before turning the concept into a truly efficient product for the home.

Tornyol is already working on a potential solution: an automatic battery-swapping system that would reduce downtime at the station and allow for significantly longer operating periods.

Another challenge involves safety.

The sonar is not as sophisticated as the camera you'd usually find on many drones, but it is built for one purpose.

The concept is one that Alex Toussaint, who created the Tornyol, discussed publicly back at the 2024 Superconference, an event for hackers.

There, he explained how any drone's fast-turning propellers could chop up a mosquito, but a human pilot would be unlikely to have the precision to track the insect.

Add in some off-the-shelf (to electronics enthusiasts, at least) components and Toussaint found that some tiny microphones could pick up the sonar return as well as the human range they were built for, so he just needed to get to work on the software.

The core element is the same component as you'd find used as a reversing sensor on many vehicles. The other sensor available to the drone's AI is a microphone to pick up the mosquito's sound and position it using the Doppler effect.

These have been upgraded to a base station with LeSonar2 phased array sonar, 380 smartphone microphones and a Artix-7 FPGA to map the world in 3D. The drone, then, isn't working entirely alone, but receiving advice from a computer

This gives it the ability to track 0.1mm movements in a range of 26ft (8m) – very precise indeed!

Unbelievably for a company that has recorded its first air-to-air kill, it is planning on rolling it out for U.S.-based customers "in the next few weeks," though at the moment a deposit of $100 and either a payment plan or a $1,100 final price are possibly as off-putting as that vagueness.

On the plus side, it seems very unlikely that this tech will successfully achieve the eradication of an entire species anytime soon, which is good because there would undoubtedly be unforeseen effects.

For one thing, mosquito larvae consume organic matter in water, and might actually help clean some lakes and water near the places the flying insects are most known for spreading disease. Species which eat them, like the mosquitofish, and some migratory birds, could see serious population falls too.

A flying device inside a home must be able to coexist with people, children, and pets. For this reason, the design incorporates shielded propellers, obstacle-avoidance mechanisms, and systems intended to maintain a safe distance from the home's occupants.

The device's low weight was also chosen to minimize the consequences of any potential collision.

For now, however, the product is still under development. The company plans to begin initial shipments in the United States in 2027, with an announced price of around $100.

If the technology can overcome its current limitations, fighting mosquitoes could take on a very different look: instead of hunting for the insect around the house, you might simply be able to let a small machine do the work for you.

 

mundophone