You go, Bzigo

Bzigo. © Evan Ackerman/IEEE Spectrum.

You’ve finally gotten to bed and are about to sink into a delicious dream when you’re yanked back to consciousness by the dreaded, high-pitched drone of a mosquito. You turn the light back on and throw yourself into the task of tracking it down and smashing it mercilessly before, hopefully, getting back to your dream where you left off. The only thing is, finding a mosquito in a room can be like finding a needle in a haystack. Happily, an Israeli start-up stepped up to the challenge and presented its solution at the CES in Las Vegas: the Bzigo. Bzigo’s visual tracking system can reliably spot mosquitoes at distances of up to 8 meters, thanks to a single near-IR (850nm) camera with a pair of IR illuminators and a wide angle lens. Once a bug is detected, an eye-safe laser will follow it until it lands and then draws a box around it for you so you can attack with your implement of choice. Unfortunately, the Bzigo isn’t able to bring the task to its grisly conclusion. We’d like to see it equipped with a laser zapper (maybe dangerous, but cool). Bzigo has raised one round of funding, and they’re currently looking to raise a bit more to fund manufacturing of the device. Once that comes through, the first version of the system should be available in 12-14 months for about USD170.

⇨ YouTube, “Introducing Bzigo - First ever device to detect and locate mosquitoes.”

⇨ IEEE Spectrum, Evan Ackerman, “Bzigo laser system detects and tracks mosquitoes so you can destroy them.”