Intellectual Ventures Lab

If you still haven’t flipped through the latest issue of Make Magazine, well here it is.  Not the whole thing, just 3ric Johanson’s critically (do I qualify as a critic?) acclaimed article on the Photonic Fence.  Creating a machine that shoots mosquitoes out of the sky with lasers has been no small task.  3ric gives the low down on everything from the preliminary eye-rolling brainstorms, to the three challenges in mosquito assassination, as well as explanations of the hardware, software and methods he is currently using.  Read the entire article below.

Make 23: Mosquito Blaster

Last weekend we held a smallish release party for Make Magazine Issue 23 at Ada’s Technical Books in Seattle.    The cover features none other than the Photonic Fence project, and contains a lovely write up by 3ric Johanson with support from many folks here at the lab & Make Magazine.

Copies of the issue were passed out in exchange for participation in a single-question survey.   Here are the results:

Just tell us what you like to make.

monkey men, circuit bending, tesla coils, amps, lasers, machines of death and destruction, furniture, low cost audio computers for info access to reduce poverty, sewing projects, gardening projects, foody makery, ceramics, a robot that clears large areas of weeds on a steep inline, alternate histories, redesigned clothing, web apps, movies, self-replicating Reprap 3D printers, news, music, friends, smiles and stuff, backyard crucibles, laser light plane touch surface, drones, free enterprise, modeled computers, 3D objects & 3D objects that make 3D objects, metalwork, sustainable design, sculpture, housing, fashion, electronics, embedded CPU projects, trouble, RC aircraft…then crashing them…then re-making them, ATM prototypes, 3ric, anything original or wicked fun, software, cardboard creatures with electric eyes, simulations of societies, AI stuff, coin-shrinkers, fulgurites, wood carvings, wooden things, books, knives, motorcycles, theramin, machines to learn, soldered pysanky, yarn, block prints, costumes, handicrafts, kinetic LED sculptures for “still” photography, lego robots, Craft Robo paper cut art, electronics for scientific computing, clothes, gadgets, clothes with gadgets, FPGA boards, edible sound, magnetic art, new and infeasible ideas, shiny photos, random thing driven by microcontrollers, making people jump (parkour), skin/skeleton/guts electronics, mobile robots, dangerous toys, cupcakes, new and amazing hacking tools, concrete structures,  projBox kit, video games, companies, making people ride bikes to power the entire Seattle Bicycle Music Festival.

The most popular things people like to make according to this very formal and controlled study are robots and trouble.  Needless to say, Make Magazine caters to a hands-on and creative, though unmistakeably diverse, crowd.  Find the latest issue covering our mosquito laser on newsstands everywhere.

For photos from the event: Read more…

For those of us who were unable to attend the TED conference back in February (my couch cushions just couldn’t quite turn up the $6,000 price of admission), we are in luck!   Today, Nathan Myhrvold’s talk was released for the world to see.  Check out our founder highlighting several of our malaria projects, along with cameo appearances by 3ric Johanson and Pablos Holman.

We’ve been seeing more and more visitors from the media around here. The most recent journalist to peruse the lab was Newsweek’s Dan Lyons, who was looking for the lowdown on our malaria work. Although the Photonic Fence, a.k.a. the mosquito laser system, has gotten most of the press lately due to Nathan Myhrvold’s TED talk, we have several other malaria projects that are starting to turn heads as well.

The meat of the article follows Karima Nigmatulina, Ph.D. and Philip Eckhoff, Ph.D. (pictured above) and their disease modeling software. A few other projects got shout-outs as well. These include malaria detection tools headed by Michael Hegg, Ph.D. and Ben Wilson Ph.D. (pictured below), the artificial mosquito diet of Barcin Acar Ph.D. and Emma Mullen, and of course 3ric Johanson’s Photonic Fence. Even TerraPower managed to sneak in there.

Dan was a machine, bolting from group to group and scrawling endless notes in the process; we watched him fill up three whole pads of paper! The result is “Short-Circuiting Malaria,” which can be found on Newsweek‘s website and will be in print any day now. We appreciate the coverage and are excited that more of our projects are being recognized.

Check out the Newsweek article here.

…well, minus the CD-ROM. The slideshow gives a rundown of the Photonic Fence’s mechanics and envisioned uses. Enjoy…unless you’re on a Flash-hating iPad

Several years ago we had a thought. The discussion that followed looked more or less like this:

If mosquito populations can be effectively controlled, then we could make a huge impact in the fight against malaria.

Okay, so why not just shoot the mosquitoes out of the sky?

That’s absolutely preposterous…let’s do it!

It wasn’t exactly clear how to convince the disease carriers to fall from the air.  However, we were confident that a system could be designed that was far cleaner and more controlled than fumigation and certainly more efficient than old-fashion hand slapping.  Wondering if an unhealthy dose of photons might do the trick, we set out in search of an energy- and cost-effective way to kill a mosquito with light. This was no easy task as it became apparent that these insects, though tiny and seemingly fragile, are very resilient. Research engineer, Tom Nugent walks us through the various dosing experiments that have led us to our current method of mosquito elimination.

You can image that preparing a TED talk is no small task. However, a demonstration as ambitious and technical as shooting mosquitoes with lasers proved to be quite a feat.

Between enhancing and cleaning up the software, assembling and mounting all the components, and just making sure everything looked nice and polished, we had a half dozen people occupied for over a month. During the last minute scrabble, some valuable lessons were learned. First, when the shipping company delivers the wrong crate to TED, effectively losing the world’s only Photonic Fence, it helps not to panic. Also, we now know that hotel water glasses are great places to grow extra mosquitoes when you’re running low.

Getting ready for TED was a lot of work, but nevertheless fun and surreal. We are excited about the enthusiastic response following Nathan’s talk, and can’t wait to share our next big idea with you.

Last week, Nathan Myhrvold, founder and CEO of Intellectual Ventures presented several of IV’s “malaria projects” to the audience at TED 2010. The Photonic Fence is one piece in a suite of inventions we are working on to help track, understand, detect, treat and eradicate malaria.  It has captured a lot of attention and we have received many questions about how it works. In response, we wanted to share some details on the mechanics of this project.

The following video of 3ric Johanson was shot the night before our TED talk at 3 AM in a hallway of the hotel. The hotel staff were good sports despite the death rays and bug boxes.

The Photonic Fence is not for sale today. IV does not produce products, but ideas. To that end, this prototype is a proof of concept. We are looking to partner with another company or organization to make this idea a reality. So stay tuned.

You can learn more about our other malaria projects here and stay tuned to the lab blog for future updates.

These high speed photographic images of mosquitoes were captured by Intellectual Ventures Laboratory scientists using a Vision Research Phantom V12.1, shooting at up to 6,000 frames per second.  [read more about IV's malaria research]

Understanding Mosquito Flight: Intellectual Ventures researchers study flight dynamics of mosquitoes to look for novel ways to attack them.  This video shows a technique called “Particle Image Velocimetry.” Tiny suspended water droplets, illuminated by a green planar laser, show the movement of the air around the mosquito’s wing.

Download video in high definition (58.9 MB)

Mosquito in Flight: This video depicts an Anopheles stephensi mosquito in flight.  To capture this footage in focus, the mosquito was placed in a custom designed chamber that sensed when the mosquito flew through the focal plane.

Download video in high definition (19.3 MB)

Mosquito Shootdown Sequence: Video clips showing mosquitoes being killed by lasers.  If played in real time, these segments would be roughly 1/10th of a second long.

Download video in high definition (26.2 MB)

Why We Work on Solutions for the Prevention, Detection and Eradication of Malaria

Why are you inventing in this area?

Humanity faces significant global health challenges that have been difficult to solve through traditional methods.  Our hope is that through inventive thinking, we can find new ways to tackle some of these issues.

With regard to our malaria projects, we are actively pursuing several invention ideas that could help detect, prevent and eradicate the disease. We believe that introducing the right combination of these technologies—while keeping older approaches in place—will lead to a better chance of completely eradicating malaria.

But why malaria and not AIDS or other health issues?

We have a variety of global health projects underway. One reason we are focusing on malaria first is it is a disease that is both preventable and curable. Yet more than one million people—including half a million children—reportedly died of the disease last year.

Read more…