How sewer robots helped a Taiwan city kill off disease-carrying mosquitoes

Dengue fever, malaria, Zika, West Nile virus and other mosquito-borne diseases may have finally met their match in crowded cities across the tropics. An unmanned, subterranean, robotic probe dispatched into the sewers of Kaohsiung City, Taiwan has proven lethally effective at locating the hidden pools of stagnant water where mosquitos breed. The sewer robot searches, so Taiwan's exterminators can destroy it. Researchers with Taiwan's National Mosquito-Borne Diseases Control Research Center found that their robotic hunter helped dramatically curb the city's mosquito population -- dropping the number of blood-sucking bugs by nearly 70 percent. Researchers with Taiwan's National Mosquito-Borne Diseases Control Research Center found that their robotic hunter helped dramatically curb the city's mosquito population, dropping the number of blood-sucking bugs by nearly 70 percent, based on their'gravitrap index' Researchers designed an unmanned ground vehicle (top) to scour cracks and crevices deep in the sewers of Kaohsiung.