In a flat area, you could imagine designing a system so that it couldn't aim below horizon, and then mount it 10-15 feet up to mitigate the risk of blinding.

That sounds like a big risk to aircraft.

Shouldn’t be too hard to pull FlightAware data or similar and just not ever shoot within n degrees of aircraft… if it was really much of a concern to start with. Big sky theory.

Not all aircraft broadcast ADS-B positions.

And as a low-time pilot who’s been bit with laser beams from people’s Christmas decorations, I’d argue the big sky theory doesn’t apply here.

FlightAware doesn't show all airplanes that are flying, only ones with ADS-B receivers, which are not required.

If it has IR it should also be able to spot aircraft trails but either way if there is any risk of blinding a pilot then they should tread extremely lightly (or non-startup-ish, i.e. obvious potential for "move fast and kill people").

Flightaware’s api isn’t super cheap, that would add up if you’re calling the planes overhead API all day

How long of a pulse is required to disable an insect? How long to be a danger to airplane pilots?

Could multiple lasers converge on a point, such that each individual laser can't do any damage at the range of a aircraft, but combined they can kill an insect?

Also, can we get a laser that's collimated badly enough that the beam is ~harmless at distances where an aircraft can be, while still collimated well enough to fry the insect? (In the spirit of "the best radiation shield is r squared".)

I think an aircraft flying 15 feet above ground is a big risk to your crops too.

That's a good point.

And birds

The original article was published a month or so earlier, and sounded a bit like the angular resolution for whatever machine was already determined, and they worked their way back to suitable bugs and the use case, rather than having a specific issue in mind and designing the setup around.

Which original article? I would be interested to read it.

[1]. Upon re-reading this, they don't even have the actual laser rig, just a camera and a methodology to estimate future locations to compensate for [camera] latencies with accuracy that conveniently fits within average body sizes of specific spices of a bug. This is also funded by "Moonshot R&D Program" and its sub-programs[2][3] ran by the Cabinet Office of Government of Japan.

Are you fluent in the language by chance? Because I might be able to explain how I came to post the above comment but it's hard, it just ... smells.

1: https://www.naro.go.jp/publicity_report/press/laboratory/nip...

2: https://www8.cao.go.jp/cstp/moonshot/index.html

3: https://www.affrc.maff.go.jp/docs/moonshot/moonshot.html

Thanks. I was able to read [1] with the help of Google Translate. From what I understand, this is an announcement of the project being funded within the Moonshot program and thus it is expected that the capabilities discussed are the goal, not what the researchers have already demonstrated.

Why is 1.4cm at 1km great? You still missed, so it's terrible at any range.

Because that's only 1.4mm at 1m, which is very useful.

This doesn’t look right

I've been sick for a few weeks, you are right.

It doesn't necessarily work like that, it might be 1.4cm across its entire range.