What’s all the buzz? A new laser device could take the sting out of mosquito bites

Pesky mosquitoes could be about to have their own AI-powered reckoning (writes James Chambers). Photon Matrix Lab, a start-up from Jiangsu province northwest of Shanghai, claims to have developed a laser device and algorithm that can zap mozzies straight out of the air. The portable machine, which looks a lot like a projector or speaker, can be used at home, mounted on restaurant walls or brought along to a picnic or barbecue, creating a six-metre-wide safe zone. No fuss, no chemicals and none of the annoying zapping sounds made by those tennis-racket-style plastic paddles. The company’s AI-generated marketing pictures show fly-fishers and campers enjoying the outdoors bite-free. Excited? I’m buzzing. 

This slightly daft-sounding innovation could be lifted straight out of a comic book. It could also be life-changing for those of us who live in the tropics. Mosquito bites are a regular occurrence in cities such as Bangkok but the prevention industry still feels very analogue, relying on coils and plug-ins. Planes landing at Suvarnabhumi International Airport advise passengers to wear long-sleeved clothing; nets and shutters are standard on all windows and doors; and my medicine drawer at home is full of all manner of sprays, stickers, oils and dual-purpose sun creams. As a family we each have a citronella spritz before going to the park and are forced to retire at dusk, mosquito hour, to lock down the apartment, crank up the air conditioning and apply Zam-Buk to any itchy bites – a miracle herbal ointment and my must-have buy for any trip to Southeast Asia. 

There is a serious side to all of this spraying and splatting. Thursday is World Mosquito Day, which marks the discovery by a British doctor that mosquitos transmit malaria between humans. That was in 1897. More than 125 years later, mosquito-borne diseases, including dengue fever, yellow fever, zika and chikungunya, still kill more than one million people annually and infect up to 700 million – almost a tenth of the global population. 

While many have to grin and bear it, richer governments spend considerable resources on public health warnings about the dangers of stagnant water and regular fogging – spraying clouds of insecticide inside parks. Singapore is at the forefront of insect suppression. The National Environment Agency has, for the past decade, been releasing sterile, lab-bred, male mosquitoes to mate with females and limit their ability to reproduce. 

The wealthy, tech-savvy city-state would actually be an ideal test case for Photon Matrix Lab’s anti-mosquito lasers, provided the machine is proven safe to birds and bees as well as humans. Southeast Asians are a lot quicker than Europeans to adopt Chinese technology. Hospitality venues in Singapore also deploy cooling techniques to make outdoor seating areas more comfortable, so why not an anti-mosquito, Israel-style laser dome? 

Wang Chuan, CEO and founder of Photon Matrix Lab, started his company because he was fed up with mosquito bites. China Daily, a state-owned newspaper, quoted him as saying, “By compressing industrial-grade laser systems into a compact, consumer-ready device and pairing them with AI algorithms, Chinese engineers effectively turned a cannon into a sniper rifle.”

Demand for this technology could easily go international as climate change turns mosquitoes into a global problem. The dozy, well-fed ones that can now be found in London gardens are far easier to swat than their smaller, sprightlier Southeast Asian cousins but they are no less annoying. Following a design overhaul and brand makeover, the Photon Matrix could become Europe’s must-have gadget next summer.  

Taking the sting out of mosquitoes would be a sizeable soft-power win for Beijing. While the US’s biggest business minds are gazing up at space, China’s brightest engineers are battling earth-bound challenges that demonstrate the ingenuity of homegrown innovation and deliver tangible benefits to consumers.