Drone racing

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.​​

American drone company xCraft previously impressed the TV sharks on Shark Tank with a quadcopter rig that turns a smartphone into a flying cockpit and camera. Now the startup is looking to impress drone racers with the beta version of its "Rogue" model, one of the fastest flyers we've seen.

The Chile Drone Nationals held over the weekend saw pilots gather from around the country, and even across the border from Peru and Argentina, to compete for one of five tickets to the world champs in Hawaii next month.

​​New York-based robotics startup Autonomous is looking to merge real-life drone racing with a virtual reality experience with its new Drone Racing Kit.

In an attempt to highlight the speed credentials of its new 2017 GT-R, Nissan has employed a vehicle of a different sort. It has custom built a drone it claims is one of the fastest accelerating FPV racing drones in the world specifically to keep apace with the powerful supercar.

Ready-to-fly racing drones are opening up this growing sport to a whole new generation of pilots that have no interest in soldering. Walkera's F210 3D is a wickedly quick racer in a box, built to take some serious abuse in a crash.