The buzzing outside is not that of a blood-sucking mosquito. It’s a mosquito’s worst nightmare.

That is at least the goal of the French startup Tornyol. The company is building a small autonomous quadcopter drone designed to detect and remove insects from a digitally mapped area. Mimicking a bat, the drone uses ultrasonic sonar to identify mosquitoes based on their unique flapping frequency. He then locks on the target and rushes towards it at high speed to deliver a fatal blow. Although the drone relies on modern smartphone technology and software to “see” the world around it, its method of execution is decidedly old-fashioned: it simply shreds mosquitoes into pieces using its propellers.

The 40 gram quadcopter weighs about the same as a golf ball. While still in development, Tornyol is moving forward. This week, company founder Alex Toussaint posted a clip on X demonstrating what he describes as the drone’s first successful “air-to-air kill.” But the first ravaged victim of the insecticide was not a mosquito at all. It was an unfortunate moth. In the clip, Toussaint can be seen releasing the moth into a small white room before running out of the frame. Then the Tornyol drone zooms in and fixes on the fluttering insect. A chase ensues that lasts several seconds and concludes with the drone ramming the moth, instantly shredding it into bloody pieces.

Hopefully, the moth’s sacrifice will not be in vain. In the future, Tornyol wants to focus his drone strictly on mosquito populations. When fully operational, the company says its aerial sentry will be able to autonomously patrol an area of ​​up to five acres. The drone will constantly buzz around searching for targets for three minutes straight, before heading back to a base station to recharge its battery. Currently, potential customers can purchase the drone outright for $1,100 or opt for a $50/month subscription plan. The ultimate goal here, the company states in bold capital letters on its website, is simply: “NO MORE MOSQUITOES.”

“Because these drones are so small, inexpensive, and yet very fast, we will be able to kill mosquitoes at unprecedented scale and cost,” the company writes in its online manifesto.

Confronting “humanity’s oldest and worst enemies”

Mosquitoes are not just annoying pests. After centuries of efforts to reduce their numbers with mosquito nets and insecticides, they are still responsible for hundreds of thousands of human deaths each year. In 2023, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that mosquito-borne malaria caused 597,000 deaths in 83 countries. Warmer temperatures and longer summers in much of the world may make the situation even worse. Citing those figures, Tornyol characterizes flying disease vectors as “one of humanity’s worst and oldest enemies.”

Toussaint says the technology powering his mosquito catcher actually started years ago with the dream of carrying a can of soda from your refrigerator to your couch without getting up. He initially wanted to equip a small drone with vision cameras, but quickly realized that they were too heavy and required too much computing power. That setback eventually led to LeSonar2, a phased system that uses 380 smartphone microphones and parking assist sensors to listen for echoes.

In practice, the drone emits an ultrasonic pulse and then uses the microphones to listen to signals from the insects’ flapping wings. Toussaint trained the system to distinguish between various insects by their subtly unique wingbeats. For example, wasps have long, thin wings and a slower wingbeat than fruit flies, with their shorter, stubby wings. The flapping of mosquitoes is even faster. This insect detection capability is essential to ensure that when the drone is eventually released into the wild, it doesn’t end up wiping out innocent bees and butterflies that might get caught in its path.

Tornyol – Microdrone that kills mosquitoes

Although the drone’s small and lightweight form factor makes it an attractive sentinel, its construction also presents it with some limitations. Currently, the drone can only fly for three minutes before running out of battery. Once that happens, you must return to your capsule to recharge, which can take up to 30 minutes. While the company notes that it is looking at ways to change the batteries to make them last longer, a three-minute cycle on and a 30-minute break will likely give mosquitoes enough time to regroup or flee. It’s also unclear how many bugs the drone can eliminate before it needs maintenance. After all, it delivers the final blow by smashing the insects with its propellers, a process that presumably causes some wear and tear on the hardware itself.

Still, Tornyol says he’s not content to just kill the one mosquito buzzing on the front porch. The company wants to eliminate its entire lineage. Over time, they say all the data collected by their drones will help them create a high-definition map of mosquito breeding grounds. Analysis of that data should help shed light on where mosquitoes seek blood, where they lay their eggs, and where they feed on nectar.

“With this in mind, we believe we will be able to completely eradicate mosquitoes from areas where humans live,” Tornyol says on his site.

2025 PopSci Best of what’s new

The 50 most important innovations of the year