First there were battlebots. Now there are high-speed drone racing leagues, and it looks awesome.
The first race of the 2016 Drone Racing League took over Miami’s Sun Life Stadium, home of the NFL’s Miami Dolphins, at night, with four teams of drone racers lighting up the stadium at night in a race around and through the NFL stadium. At such high speeds, making turns to go from the stands to the concourse is a refined skill and those who lack the control of their drone can fall behind in a hurry.
We first caught wind of this drone racing league earlier this year and the early video of the competition was pretty amazing. Much of the footage we had previously seen was included in the above video, except now we got the more polished look of the final product the DRL hopes will continue to grow and spark interest before one day, hopefully, filling stadiums with fans.
The DRL has a good amount of work to be done before getting to that point of course. For now, the races are not broadcasting live on television or even the Internet yet. Instead, the race is packaged together and shared at a later time. You have to imagine there are quite a bunch of security concerns with drones racing around at such high speeds through stadiums. One drone losing control could easily take out a fan or two (or more), and that doesn’t even include the concourse levels.
What also needs to be known is whether or not drones are a trend that will flame out before the DRL gets a chance to make the big lofty goals a reality. If drones are here to stay, that’s great news for the DRL’s future. But if drones are just today’s trend the way these so-called hoverboards could be, then this thing could crash before we know it.
But for now, we’ll keep tuning in to see what comes next!
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