A Chinese start-up that is developing an AI-powered laser mosquito zapper has raised US$2.7 million on the Indiegogo crowdfunding platform as it navigates the challenges of complex sensor calibrations and Western safety regulations.<\/p>\n
Photon Matrix Lab, based in Changzhou, in eastern China\u2019s Jiangsu province, has gone viral around the world with its portable laser mosquito defence system, which compresses industrial-grade lasers into a consumer device. Promising to rapidly detect and eliminate mosquitoes mid-flight using an AI-powered vision module and lidar, the crowdfunding round far exceeded its initial US$20,000 target.<\/p>\n
Sales director Lawrence Leng said this week that Photon Matrix now had over 4,000 overseas backers from more than 50 countries, with Indiegogo saying each had paid around US$630 for the right to acquire one of the devices when they went into mass production.<\/p>\n
Mature local supply chains helped grass-roots innovators in China repurpose military or industrial technology, such as low-cost lidar and edge computing, for everyday consumer use, Photon Matrix chief technology officer Li Ran told China Daily in April.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Silicon Valley, it\u2019s hard to find a supplier who can prototype a high-precision fibre laser module in two weeks,\u201d Li said. \u201cBut in Changzhou, the supply chain is right downstairs.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, hardware crowdfunding is littered with delayed or failed projects. Photon Matrix initially said it expected deliveries of the hi-tech mosquito zappers to begin early this summer, but the mass production timeline has been pushed back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Chinese start-up that is developing an AI-powered laser mosquito zapper has raised US$2.7 million on the Indiegogo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,222268,218,219,110452,114,222267,14850,61,222265,60,76767,222266,222264,4077,80,115],"class_list":["post-521471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-ai-powered-laser-mosquito-zapper","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-changzhou","tag-china","tag-european-ce-safety-certification","tag-food-and-drug-administration","tag-ie","tag-indiegogo","tag-ireland","tag-jiangsu-province","tag-photon-matrix","tag-photon-matrix-lab","tag-silicon-valley","tag-technology","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}