A NYT report (link) describes use of drones in Sri Lanka to identify mosquito breeding sites (pools of standing water) so they can be eliminated. Once identified, property owners are notified to “clear them out or face a fine.” This is an extremely important public health initiative in many countries
where mosquitoes transmit diseases like malaria, dengue fever, Zika virus, West Nile virus, chikungunya, and yellow fever.
However, the Sri Lankan program described in the article involves a lot of friction that will reduce its effectiveness. Identifying the responsible human contact, performing followup compliance checks, and ultimately working through the legal and administrative process to address non-compliance requires considerable time and logistical process.
Instead, why not simply add an automated Pez dispenser-like attachment to each drone, and fill the dispensers with mosquito larva killing tablets instead of candy? When a standing pool of water is identified, the drone will hover over it and a mechanism will simply pull back on the dispenser’s Hello Kitty or Chewbacca head, and drop a tablet into the water.
It’s quite possible that this workflow of stagnant water identification and tablet release will require HITL to increase certainty that the tablets aren’t being dropped into the punch bowl at a 6-year-old’s outdoor birthday party. But that’s a lot less trouble than the current approach.
Note: the mosquito dunks shown here (link) are not the correct shape for use in mosquito-killing Pez dispensers. Instead, a Pez factory will need to be contracted to dedicate a production line to mosquito-milling tablets. (And if re-used for candy production later, the candy will need to be distributed with a note on the label: “Processed on equipment that also processes mosquito larvae killer.”)