We just had the first successful high altitude R2Home demonstration! 

After getting the « go for flight » from Skyguide (Air traffic regulation authorities in Switzerland) R2Home rose up to 3500m (11400ft) under a weather balloon launched by MeteoSwiss. At this altitude it autonomously detached itself from the balloon before opening its paraglider wing and flying back to the launch site to land within five meters of the launch point!

Here is the video of the flight: 

It came back with a RS41 radiosonde attached as a payload. This is the first small step toward making them reusable. 

Here is the trajectory of the flight : 

You will notice that we had a ton of altitude margin, for 15 minutes R2Home was just doing circles above the landing point meaning we can easily go higher next time or with more wind :)

The wing was trimmed on the slowest position for a flight speed between 5 and 7 m/s. With trim speed on fast we should be able to reach 8-9 m/s and above. 

You can also see three waypoints on the trajectory. These were placed such that R2Home would avoid flying directly above any populated area (public pool and big parking place). 

On the flight video you can also notice the new "tube" containing R2Home. It's a foam shell designed in collaboration with ECAL design student Lucie Herter (Credits for all the following pictures). 

The plan was to create a shell that would correspond to the idea of modularity. A shell in two parts with one of the two parts that is specific to a given application and the second part that is related to the minimum system and the same for all applications. 

After this demonstration the future looks pretty bright. We have new interesting challenges to solve. What is the best navigation strategy? Taking into account the wind forecast, having a very long list of possible landing points? 

We'll learn this by the end of the summer :) 

Yohan