WeRobotics have committed to developing Drones that scatter swarms of sterile male mosquitoes which cannot produce offspring when they mate with females over wide areas to help stop the spread of diseases such as malaria.
The drones could spread the mosquitoes in areas where these diseases prevail and such areas that are difficult to access where roads do not exist.
By crowding out other males, it is expected that the population of the disease carrying insects will reduce drastically.
The method of releasing sterile insects to control population has proved more effective for a variety of species over other conventional methods like fumigation and use of insecticide which require constant deployment.
Adam Klaptocz, WeRobotics co-founder revealed that the major challenge is having to pack thousands of fragile mosquitoes into a payload without destroying their really thin wings and legs.
The next challenge is releasing the insects gradually over a wide area, without waking up the whole lot at once.
To achieve safely deploying these insects, they are first cooled to 4-8C, putting them into a sleep-like state that stops them moving around.
The company's team have designed a rotating platform with holes in it, through which individual mosquitoes fall landing in a holding chamber where they wake up, and can fly out into the wild.
"We may be spreading mosquitoes in areas where they are seen as a vector of death. We need to speak to the local population before a single mosquito is released." Klaptocz said.
The drones are still in development stage, but the non-profit company is optimistic to begin trial of its technology in Latin America in 2018. First at areas with high risk of Zika virus.
