It's definitely annoying when you're trying to swat a mosquito that's flying around a room, but you lose track of where it is. Bzigo is designed to help, as it optically-tracks mozzies and then highlights them with an eye-safe laser.
Developed by an Israeli startup of the same name, Bzigo incorporates an infrared LED, an HD wide-angle infrared camera, and a microprocessor. Utilizing computer vision algorithms running on the latter, it's reportedly able to differentiate between mosquitos and other pixel-sized airborne objects (such as dust particles) based on their movement patterns. It even works in the dark.
Once Bzigo detects that a mosquito is in the room, it notifies the user via an app on their smartphone. To help them see where the insect is, the device laser-projects a box around it, whenever it stops moving. It's then up to the user to do the actually swatting, although a future version of the product may be able to "autonomously eliminate" mosquitoes after they've been detected.
![](https://assets.newatlas.com/dims4/default/7cedb10/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1920x1090+0+0/resize/1440x818!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnewatlas-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fbb%2F3b%2F97163c274164943e33569a91898c%2Fbzigoresearch.jpeg)
The current prototype, which was unveiled this week at CES in Las Vegas, is reportedly capable of sighting mosquitoes up to a distance of 8 meters (26 feet). It's intended for indoor use only.
Should you be interested in getting one, you can reserve a unit by placing a US$9 deposit via the first link below. Doing so will get backers a $30 discount on the planned $169 retail price. The company is currently in talks with investors, with hopes of having Bzigo on the market sometime early next year.
Source: Bzigo via IEEE Spectrum