A new Wi-Fi enabled system promises to help hotels find and eliminate bed bugs without the help of exterminators.
AIM, a product developed by a company named Delta Five, promises a 98 percent success rate. It monitors a bedroom using internal cameras and, as insects are lured to an embedded trap, it uses Wi-Fi connectivity to alert smartphones and provide real-time views of the bugs.
It sounds gross, but this sort of technology could be huge for the hotel industry, especially if it helps with early detection of bed bugs before they spread to other rooms. Typically, hotels need to hire human inspectors or dogs to hunt down bed bugs.
Delta Five says AIM will cost 1/900th of typical solutions, just "pennies per room" to roll out. The 3-inch detector can be stowed out of sight so guests won't even know there's a bed bug detector hiding in their room, and can easily be disposed of when bugs are detected and trapped.
Delta Five hopes its tech is used in homes, assisted living facilities, hotels, cruise ships, call centers and other places where bed bugs appear.