Kite Patch makes you invisible to mosquitoes
This lightweight patch can keep blood-sucking bugs away and could prove key in the global battle against malaria.
Aside from tick-slaying robots, what we all need for summer is mosquito-slaying robots.
That could happen in the future, but for now there's Kite Patch, a square you stick on your clothing to make you practically invisible to mosquitoes for up to 48 hours.
The patch uses non-toxic compounds that disrupt mosquitoes' ability to find people through CO2, according to its fundraising campaign on Indiegogo.
The technology was developed by Olfactor Laboratories and the University of California at Riverside, with backing from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
The $75,000 Indiegogo campaign is focused on sending 20,000 Kite patches for large-scale testing in Uganda, where malaria rates are over 60 percent.
Some 660,000 people died of malaria in 2010, mostly in Africa, according to the World Health Organization. A child dies of the disease every minute of every day, says Kite co-founder Torrey Tayenaka.
From $35, backers can send 10 patches to Uganda and receive 10 for themselves. The patch is designed to be durable, affordable everywhere, and can be put not only on clothing but bags, baby strollers, or whatever else you're using.
The pic below shows it's effective in a glove test, and it seems a lot more convenient than dousing yourself with bug spray.
Or waiting for someone to invent robots that kill mosquitoes.
