A company in Japan has unveiled a new contraption that can be loosely described as a drone with a vacuum cleaner attached.
But rather than using it for cleaning hard-to-reach surfaces, the machine is designed to remove troublesome wasp nests.
Duskin Co., a cleaning and pest control firm based in the city of Osaka about 250 miles southwest of Tokyo, says its machine significantly improves the safety of a task so hazardous that around 15 people die every year while attempting to carry it out manually, according to The Mainichi.
As you can see in the video, the modified quadcopter features a funnel and a hose that leads to a cylinder into which the bees and parts of the nest are collected.
The setup allows the pest controller to stand a safe distance from the nest while gradually removing it using the drone.
A recent demonstration of the technology took about two hours to remove a single nest, including the manual cleanup work at the end.
The specialized drone would be particularly useful in scenarios where the nest is in a location that’s hard for humans to access. In fact, Duskin said that on some occasions, before it developed the drone, it had to pass on extermination jobs where the nest was in a position too difficult to safely reach.
Explaining the effectiveness of its specially designed drone, Duskin drone expert Yusuke Saito told The Mainichi that when wasps recognize an enemy, whether a human, animal, or machine such as its drone, “they secrete an alarm pheromone and attack in groups. By attaching pheromones to the drone, they will gather at the machine and can be exterminated efficiently.”
Saito said his company is planning to use more drones in its work to remove wasp nests from problematic locations in a bid to enhance the safety of its personnel as well as improving the efficiency of its work.