Interview: Shane Kyi Hla Win and Danial Sufiyan, James Dyson Award 2024 Sustainability Winner

We entered the James Dyson Award because our goal of inventing airXeed Radiosonde aligns very well with the spirit of the Award, which is to save the environment with sustainable solutions. We were very shocked but also excited when James Dyson called us to say that we’ve won the Award. It’s a great reassurance on the potential impact of our invention. 

As postdoctoral researchers, a big focus of our work has been on nature-inspired drones. After we developed our maple seed wing, we started looking into its potential use cases. That’s when we discovered the environmental damage caused by costly, single-use radiosondes launched by weather stations around the world.

The biggest challenge we encountered during our research is testing our prototypes from extreme heights, as a typical radiosonde would reach an altitude of up to 35km – about 3 times higher than airplanes. We tackled it by using drones to conduct outdoor testing, and developing our own vertical wind tunnel for indoor testing.

Similar to a maple seed, airXeed rides the wind and follows its direction. We’ve enhanced its onboard controller with machine learning, which allows it to estimate wind speed and direction, and activate dive mode once the radiosonde passes an optimal collection zone. 

According to a weather station we consulted during our research in Singapore, a typical weather balloon is made of 1kg of rubber and takes around 4 years to decompose. Due to its weight, it’s currently not possible for airXeed Radiosonde to carry it along in its descent. After we’ve tackled the more serious issue of e-waste from the electronics and lithium batteries found in conventional radiosondes, we look forward to solving the next problem of collecting this balloon material. 

After winning the Award, we hope to collaborate with weather stations to conduct high altitude testing and refine our invention further. We’d like to collaborate with radiosonde manufacturers to produce our sensors, to ensure airXeed is highly calibrated to survive harsh conditions in the atmosphere, where it could reach up to -80°C.