Drone racing

This racy-looking 12-rotor coaxial multicopter has been filmed in Croatia pulling extreme rolls and loops, and carrying a human on board. Not at the same time, mind you, but still, to see a drone of this size pulling stunts like this is astonishing.

Drone racing with human pilots at the controls has quickly evolved from an underground hobby to a fully fledged professional sport. But for its 2019 season, the Drone Racing League introduced a new kind of competition.

The 2019 Drone Racing League Allianz World Championship Season is due to take off on August 11, where a dozen top pilots will be racing 600 custom-built Racer4 drones. For the first time, the Drone Racing League is making a street-ready version of its latest pro flyer available to consumers.

Those who aren't involved in drone racing will probably be surprised to know that HD vision isn't already the standard in drone racing goggles – but that's set to change with some really nice new integrated gear from DJI, and an immediate counter-attack from Fat Shark for the DIY crowd.

Scientists at TU Delft have developed what is claimed to be the smallest autonomous racing drone on the planet, a feat that involved some serious innovations in the algorithms that control its flight path. ​

Yuneec has turned up to this year's CES setting its sights on two niche areas of hobbyist flight it is yet to really explore. Its refreshed lineup Includes an aircraft designed for aspiring drone racers, one for long-range first-person flight and a successor to the six-rotor Typhoon H.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) recently pitted its autonomous racing drones against a human pilot, and although the AI competitors still have some ground still to make up, there were distinct advantages to the computer-driven approach.

​Drone racing has risen quickly from dodgy meet-ups in abandoned warehouses to claiming some of the limelight on ESPN. Red Bull is now the latest big name to throw its weight behind the sport, hosting its first drone racing tournament over the weekend at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, Austria.

While the more familiar consumer drones can reach perfectly respectable speeds of 40 mph (64 km/h) plus, racing drones are another matter entirely. These rapid quadcopters are built purely for speed, and none more so than the RacerX.

​When it comes to drone racing, the folks at Freedom Drone Sports apparently believe that the bigger the aircraft, the better. With that in mind, the company is developing a big drone for use in a new type of racing, known as Freedom Class.

Thanks to a spherical carbon fiber monocoque exoskeleton, this FPV racing drone can take one hell of a beating - or a dunk in the snow or a puddle - and could save the average pilot a fair bit of tinkering time after a crash.

At CES this week, startup UVify has introduced a high-speed drone optimized for racing straight out of the box, that also undercuts some competitors on price.​​