31 unmanned systems
inside
April/May 2016
ENGINEERING. PRACTICE. POLICY.
Photos courtesy of Height Tech
colonies by introduc-
ing sterile males. Fe-
males mate with the
sterile males and fail to
produce offspring, thus
shrinking the size of the
next generation.
One major problem with this
approach? It's expensive and difficult.
At least two companies are attempting to
solve this problem by creating sterile insect de-
livery drones. Height Tech, a German compa-
ny, and Embention, a Spanish company, both
presented their solutions at the Drones for
Good competition in Dubai in January 2016.
Height Tech developed a quadcopter able to
deliver sterile mosquitoes, and Embention
was working on a f ixed-wing platform for
transporting sterile tsetse f lies.
TOP: A prototype
ROMEO drone that
may someday deliver
sterile mosquitoes
to known breeding
grounds to help wipe
out mosquito-borne
illnesses.
BOTTOM: Rendering
of a mobile lab where
mosquitoes would be
sterilized and loaded
into the drone.
Their approach offers many advantages in-
cluding quicker, wider distribution.
The scientists developing the sterile mosqui-
toes "are using gamma rays in the laboratory,
but the distribution [method] is they are put-
ting mosquitoes in Coca-cola cans," said Marius
Schroeder, on the Height Tech team. "It's stone-
age technology."
Vector-borne illnesses, particularly
those spread by insects,
account for
17 percent of all
infectious disease and
kill
1 million people
every year.
Source:
World Health Organization
fast
fact