Mosquitos, the main reason for the spreading of terrible diseases in more than a million people each year. And we can only crush these tiny size demons with our hands or can use mosquito repellants. But what if we have a device capable of zapping these tiny demons with a deadly laser beam automatically. Well, that’s exactly what Maker Ildar Rakhmatulin had made with help of the Raspberry Pi and a deadly laser.
Spotted by Tom’s Hardware, this project by Ildar Rakhmatulin takes the help of AI and machine learning to identify and track mosquitoes in a given space in real-time. Which then gives the galvanometer the direction in which it has to orient the laser before zapping the unsuspecting target. Nvidia‘s GeForce GTX 1060 (6GB) and AMD’s Ryzen 5 3600 CPU are used in the training of its AI network. Rakhmatulin has taken the help of a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ to complete this project. Along with using a simple Raspberry Pi Camera module to see and detect the mosquitos.
Now how it actually works, once it identifies the mosquito, a command is sent to the galvanometer by Pi to adjust the mirrors and target the mosquito. After that, the laser is powered and delivers a devastating blast to the insect. Further to check if mosquito threat is completely terminated or not it does a follow-up sweep.
As there is no video showing the device in action, people are discussing on Hacker News, that it would work in real life or not? And if you are interested in reading in detail about this project, then do visit the project page on PrePrints.