AI-powered smart mosquito trap developed at USF to help fight spread of malaria, save lives abroad

TAMPA - A new smart trap using artificial intelligence will be used to track mosquitoes that spread malaria in Africa, and it came from the minds of two University of South Florida researchers.

"Mosquitoes, I mean they are the deadliest animal on the planet. They are essentially flying hypodermic needles of disease," said Ryan Carney, an associate professor of digital science at USF’s Department of Integrative Biology.

The malaria-carrying mosquitoes, known as Anopheles stephensi, are the focus for Carney and Sriram Chellappan, a professor of computer science and engineering at USF. They want to fight malaria abroad, working together to develop a smart trap with artificial intelligence to track mosquitoes. They plan to use the traps in Africa.

How the smart trap works: first, the mosquitoes would fly in through a hole, and then they would land on a sticky pad that has attracted them. Then a camera inside would take a photograph of the mosquitoes and upload images to the cloud. The researchers would then run some machine learning algorithms on it to learn what the mosquito is or what its exact species is. That way, scientists can see where the malaria-infected mosquitoes are going.

"It is instantaneous and when a malaria mosquito is detected, then that information can be propagated to the public health official in near real time," said Chellappan. "These mosquitoes have specific areas where they like to breed. If they can go and destroy those breeding habitats, then the population can be curbed locally."

Then vaccines can go out where they are needed.

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"It can curb outbreaks. It can curb the spread of the vector, and ultimately, it’ll save lives," said Chellappan.

Malaria infects millions of people every year, and USF is working with a lab in Madagascar to deploy the traps.

"There are over 600,000 deaths every single year. Most of those deaths are in children under the age of five," said Carney. "So, malaria is a huge worldwide global health problem that continues."

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The project is funded by a $3.6 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases within the National Institutes of Health. Doing the project in Africa will also help any other region looking to track malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

"I think the seven cases in Sarasota (County) really underscores the threat of malaria. We’ve never had local transmission of malaria in the United States in the past 20 years," said Carney. "We don’t have Anopheles stephensi here yet. If and when it does rear its head on our shores, we will be ready to seek and destroy using our technologies."

The smart traps will work hand in hand with a global tracking website that’s already up. It allows citizens to take photos of mosquitoes and upload them as another way to track mosquitoes. Carney said he plans to bring the traps to Africa later this year.

"My plan is to go to Madagascar and possibly Mauritius at the end of this year before the rainy season, and then as the years progress we will be shipping and bringing many more of these, so we can monitor areas," said Carney.

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