FPV, standing for first-person view or first-person video, was the catalyst which led to the birth of drone racing, in which participants could control drones equipped with cameras while wearing head-mounted displays showing the live-stream camera feed from the drones. In 1999, an Australian called Thomas, aka “Mr. RC-CAM,” started an MSN group of drone-flying enthusiasts who desired to fly beyond the line of sight, first using baby monitors and later security cameras and small video transmitters. But it was not until 2012 that Team Drop Bear, a group from Melbourne, who had been FPV flying multi-rotor craft for a number of years, decided to do a proper race. Among them was a Queensland park ranger called Justin Welander aka “Juz70,” who had recorded and posted countless breathtaking FPV videos with his Lumenier QAV multi-rotor airframes, able to do crisp flips and 4-point rolls. Somebody calling himself “Blackout,” also from Queensland, came up with the Mini H Quad frame, almost half the size of the average drone. Using social media, “Blackout” started posting some amazing videos with very aggressive, sporty-style FPV flights on his YouTube channel, and reporting and writing about his newly designed frame, which would eventually become the world standard for FPV flight.
In November 2014, an event specialist called Terence Boyton of Gold Coast Mc, Queensland, set up Drone Racing International Pty. Ltd. to organize FPV meetings in abandoned warehouses and parking lots. By 2015 Australia held its first state-level championship in a six-race series. With events in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, with hundreds of people taking part in and watching races among quadcopters achieving speeds of over 100 mph (160 kph) through a course of illuminated checkpoints. Like all enjoyable new sports, FPV drone racing soon crossed the seas. After a successful event held at Matamata, New Zealand, alongside the MFNZ Nationals, Matthew Wellington founded Rotorcross NZ (inspired by Motocross). This has become an organized racing league, with around 8 regional championship races held throughout New Zealand every year.
By this time, FPV was giving way to full Projected Virtual Reality (PVR), a sport in which people would eventually add 360° spherical cameras to drones. However, the wireless bandwidth demands (not to mention weight and battery constraints) for live streaming such footage currently preclude this capability.
The fledgling sport’s organization in the USA came in 2015, when the first annual U.S. National Drone Racing Championship was held in a stadium at the California State Fair. Ironically, the winner was Chad Nowak of Queensland, Australia!
Justin Haggerty founded a company on April 3, 2015, to promote and build drone racing into a world renowned sport. The International Drone Racing Association, Inc. (IDRA), is a professional racing organization that sanctions and governs multiple drone racing events. IDRA’s major events and series include the 2016 World Drone Prix, the 2016 North America Cup, the 2016 Asia Cup, and the 2016 California Cup.
In 2016, drone racing received a big boost when real estate mogul and Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross invested $1 million in the New York��based startup Drone Racing League, described as the nation’s largest and most authentic drone racing championship in the history of the sport. The organization’s vast network of drone racing chapters around the United States provided a platform to hold the nation’s most competitive series based on pilot skill, not popularity. The organization strategically divided the U.S. into 15 regions that will hold over 55 qualifying events convenient to pilots’ hometowns, making the sport easily accessible and approachable to the masses.
The next phase was a World Championship, but where? And by whom? IDRA began working with the United Arab Emirates government and Aerial Grand Prix in October 2015 to co-found and host the World Drone Prix in Dubai. This was held under the patronage of Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, on March 11 and 12, 2016, at Skydive Dubai. The $250,000 prize was won by 15-year-old British competitor Luke Bannister for his team Tornado X-Blades, beating 150 teams from all over the world, including Dubai and Russia. This followed a series of pre-qualifying events held in Los Angeles, Seoul, Berlin and cities across China.
The event gave the United Arab Emirates city the opportunity to announce the start of the “World Future Sports Games,” which was expected to commence in December 2017. Sky Sports Mix Channel has invested $1 million in the Drone Racing League (DRL). On January 26, 2017, IDRA announced its professional 2017 Drone Racing Series on social media platforms. The Drone Racing Series, composed of 6 international races, started in China and ended with finals in the Netherlands.
But another series, the World Drone Racing Championships, was scheduled at Kualoa Ranch, Hawaii, for October 2016. Pilots from over 30 countries around the world competed on four world-class courses, and six separate racing events all day, every day.
The 2017 DRL Allianz World Championship saw sixteen racers competing at venues in Europe and North America, including NFL stadiums, abandoned factories, and historical landmarks. The drones had been designed and built by the League, which is a sports and media company, and are crafted differently for every race. Each model was worth from $500 to $1000, and could travel from 80 to 90 mph (130 to 140 kph). In order to prevent racers from cheating, standardized equipment was used, and DRL did not even let the participants touch the drones during the competition. The DRL Allianz World Championship Final took at Alexandra Palace, London, on June 13, 2017, as part of London Tech Week, Europe’s largest festival of technology. The winner was the DRL 2016 World Champion, 25-year-old Jordan “Jet” Temkin from Fort Collins, Colorado, in a fierce final race against eight other pilots during a round-robin format, hitting speeds of over 80 mph and zooming through the first-ever FPV Power Loop, a series of light gates covering 180 degrees, which forced the drones into an inverted dive at full speed. The final was seen by millions of fans in 75 countries, divided up into broadcast views and views of its digital content.
The 2017 Drone Champions League races were held in six colorful venues including the Champs-Elysées in Paris, the ruins of Schlosskopf fortress in Austria, the caves of the Turda Salt Mine in Romania, and Berlin Station.
In sharp contrast, in October 2017, at the World Drone Expo, Attollo Engineering, makers of the Sabrewing Rapier’s advanced sense-and-avoid system iRobotics, launched the Pacific Drone Challenge™: the first to fly the 4,500 miles (7,300 km) from the Pacific coasts of Japan to Silicon Valley, without stopping to refuel—a distance beyond the reach of current non-military drones. One of the teams already signed up for the challenge, Silicon Valley’s Sabrewing Aircraft Company, is building the SWA-3 Rapier, a fixed-wing hybrid-electric quad-rotor drone, with a 30 ft., 1 in (9 m) wingspan designed to take off from a standard runway and cover as much as 8,800 km (5,500 mi). It will be controlled via satellite, and in constant communication with both the Launch and Recover Element (“LRE,” located at the launch point in Japan) and Mission Control Element (“MCE,” located at the destination landing point of Moffett Field, Mountain View, California). Monitoring will be by two pilots on the ground, in constant contact with air traffic control. The trip is expected to last about 45 hours. Sabrewing Aircraft will be pitting its technology against that of Japanese company iRobotics.
Who might have thought that in less than twenty years, a hobby would become an exciting international sport?