AI-driven mosquito surveillance and control through on-demand manufacturing and release of sterile male mosquitoes

Project Information

RoboSIT

Grant agreement ID: 101009067

DOI

10.3030/101009067

Project closed

EC signature date 16 November 2020

Start date 1 December 2020

End date 31 May 2023

Funded under

• PRIORITY 'Societal challenges

Total cost

€ 2 002 125,00

EU contribution

€ 1 401 487,00

Coordinated by

SENECIO LTD
Israel

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - RoboSIT (AI-driven mosquito surveillance and control through on-demand manufacturing and release of sterile male mosquitoes)

Reporting period: 2021-12-01 to 2023-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Vector-borne diseases, such as malaria, are infections transmitted by infected mosquitoes and other arthropod species. In Europe, vector-borne diseases are widespread. This makes mosquito surveillance important for controlling outbreaks. However, current approaches require the manual identification of hundreds of insects to send them for pathogen analysis. To improve efficiency, the EU-funded RoboSIT project has developed a robot for this task. Specifically, it will enable mass-rearing factories and sex-sorting using artificial intelligence. Pathogen detection will then trigger the release of millions of sterile males that will mate with the females, which will no longer produce offspring. The aim is to phase out the use of highly hazardous pesticides.

Mosquitoes are the deadliest animal on the planet, with 700 million infected by mosquito born diseases every year. Given the climate change, the problem is only getting worse, as mosquitoes proved to develop resistance to some of the chemicals used against them. Senecio has been working on the objectives to build an industrial, automated production site for natural biological control, able to provide a green solution, as true commercial alternative to chemicals. As only the female mosquito bites, the biological control aims at releasing male only mosquitoes which are then mating with the females, resulting in eggs that do not hatch, and in the gradual decrease in the local mosquito population. The technique is known for years, and was successfully deployed on large scale for the suppression of fruit flies, yet, until now, there was now affordable solution for commercial size production of sterile mosquitoes.

We will expand to over 100 people in 5 years. Each new RoboSIT facility will generate 15 indirect jobs. Mosquito vector control is a stepping-stone for scaling into other vectors and pest. The potential of reducing pesticides in agriculture is huge; each year 2.5m tonnes of pesticides are used around the globe.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Towards implementing a complete solution, the company worked in the first year on automating monitoring and surveillance of mosquitoes, along advancing the state-of-the-art sorting and packaging of mosquitoes and prototyping a novel drone release solution, first of its kind.

Specimen of mosquitoes from across the USA, Europe and Israel were sent to the company, realizing partnerships and relations the company established with leading mosquito control departments, for imaging the mosquitoes, creating a unique high resolution digital repository of mosquitoes from different countries. The company further progressed with its sex separator and packaging unit for its second generation, exploring capacity to process several millions of mosquitoes per week by a single unit, an unprecedented capability by any company, globally. Deep learning algorithms were used to train the machine to identify mosquito genus, species, and sex, supporting both the automated monitoring and sorting process. A cloud-based web-platform was developed, providing insights for the user on trap results allowing them to take sound decisions in their mosquito monitoring and control operations.

Senecio has also built a complete demo site, demonstrating all process from mosquito rearing, sorting and packing, to mission planning and release, solving production as well as the logistics and operations for massive distribution. The technologies developed represent the state of the art in mosquito handling, backed by large patent portfolio, filled in multiple countries world wide.
Senecio demonstrated ability to process millions of mosquitoes, automatically, every week, making the end product affordable.
By the end of the project, Senecio signed agreement with the largest pest control company in the world, and is currently releasing sterile mosquitoes in some 5 different cities and planning on further expansion.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Mosquitoes infect millions of people annually with disease such as malaria, dengue, zika and chikungunya. Meticulous mosquito surveillance is critical for controlling outbreaks, but today’s approaches are highly ineffective. Experts need to manually identify and pool hundreds of insects and send them for pathogen analysis. We have developed an AI-driven robot to do this task. Vector control is commonly done using insecticides. 4,500 tonnes of DDT are still used every year to fight malaria due to the large unmet need in endemic areas. The insecticide-approach is unsustainable due to resistance, environmental contamination and severe impact on human health.
Our approach to vector control is to industrialize the most environment-friendly pest control method ever developed: the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT). SIT builds on the principle of releasing sterile insects in vast numbers, which mate with wild females, but do not give rise to offspring. Despite the great success that has been demonstrated using SIT in pilot studies, the technique is not scalable as sex-sorting of millions of insects is done manually. Consequently, the global impact of manual SIT is negligible. Our RoboSIT solution will encompass mass-rearing factories and sex-sorting using AI-driven robots. Pathogen detection will trigger the release of millions of sterile males in designated areas. Optimizing reaction times of outbreaks can save societies millions of € in healthcare cost. Bringing RoboSIT to market will incentivize the set-up of automated SIT facilities and reduce usage of insecticides.

Until today, loading of mosquitoes into release tubes, or sorting the mosquitoes by their sex, required intensive work and a lot of people doing the work.
Senecio invented and received allowance for multiple patents on a novel approach, for automatic processing, sex identification and sorting and packing without human intervention.
The impact is already now demonstrated by work orders already received from cities, who can now afford the new solution.

Senecio Drone system in mid-air during testing

Senecio novel automated monitoring, identification and pooling robot

Mosquito is standing stationary without ability to fly away, due to pressure difference on the net.

A group of mosquitoes inside the Senecio machine with the neural network identifying a gender.

Bottle, automatically filled by the system, with male only misquotes, ready for release on the field