E4C Fellows supported the development of this high-altitude platform for remote Earth sensing by the Good Machine venture studio portfolio company Balloon Tech, Co. Photo courtesy of Beth Van Eman / Good Machine
When a startup developing a high-altitude balloon for Earth observations sought specialized technical talent, they turned to Engineering for Change. E4C’s Fellows worked with Good Machine venture studio and their portfolio company Balloon Tech, Co. to design and prototype the platform. In concept, the platform is a suite of optical and infrared cameras and solar panels lifted by a balloon inflated with helium. It’s a locally deployable solution providing Earth observation data on demand. The platform can be customized for different purposes, and its first application will be to support wildfire fighters, tracking fires and mapping their boundaries.
Sourcing specialized technical talent to bring a vision to life can be a challenge for startups. Rather than combing through resumes, Good Machine and Balloon Tech looked to E4C’s Fellowship Program. Through an Impact Partnership on the project sponsored by Autodesk Foundation, E4C tapped a global network of technically trained Fellows to provide a short list of engineers with training matched to the tasks required. In 2023, Pun Praphanphoj, a fellow based in Thailand and the United States began work on the project with supervision from Kithinji Muriungi, an Expert Fellow based in Kenya.
‘When our first fellow, Pun, initially began working with us, we had a vague notion of what we wanted him to work on, but the company was growing quickly and our scope and priorities were evolving rapidly,” Beth Van Eman, Project Manager at Good Machine told E4C. “As a result, in the time of his fellowship, Pun really had three different project areas he contributed to. The main project he focused on was a flight termination system and his work impacted our decision-making about the balloon architecture. Along the way, Pun helped with many other things: CAD design, 3D printing, power requirements and systems, and launches.”
Learn More: E4C’s Impact Projects
Good Machine and Balloon Tech hired Pun when his fellowship ended late in 2023. The startup returned to work with E4C’s Fellowship Program in 2024. This time they brought on Jhon Vila Solier, a water resources engineer with a specialty in remote sensing technologies.
“We ultimately developed a well-defined and impactful scope of work for Jhon,” Ms. Van Eman says. “He had some software and topographical survey/mapping experience, which we knew could be useful for us.”
The startup team was looking for someone to help streamline photo processing and generate mosaics of the photos they take during flights.
“Jhon understood what we wanted and jumped into the project, each week getting us closer to what we wanted. By the end of the E4C fellowship, he had written software to process our photos into a mosaic, and we had already begun using a portion of his software during our flights for real-time photo transfers. We now have Jhon creating a dashboard that will help us plan and execute balloon flights,” Ms. Van Eman says.
Learn More: The high-altitude platform is one of E4C’s Promising Prototypes to Watch in 2024
Jhon also continues to work on the project after the fellowship has ended. After two Impact Partnerships with E4C and two hires, Good Machine’s team says they are happy with the collaboration.
“We would definitely recommend the Impact Projects programs to other organizations because we have been introduced to quality engineers who have both become valuable members of our team,” Ms. Van Eman says.
Learn more about the high-altitude platform in E4C’s Impact Research report of 2023.
Capturing High-Altitude Data for Natural Disaster Mitigation
