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Drone Racing League Receives a $1 Million From Miami Dolphins Owner

Posted by samzenpus on from the show-me-the-money dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross is investing $1 million in drone racing. The Drone Racing League (DRL), a New York startup, announced the investment today. The league hopes to recreate successes that other non-traditional sports, such as the X-Games, have had in recent years. The Wall Street Journal reports: "Earlier this summer, the League held a nonpublic trial race inside the abandoned Glenwood Power Plant in Yonkers. Six pilots standing on the power plant floor controlled their drones as they flew down the warehouse's hallways and through open windows. There are typically five to seven participants per race. Racers wear virtual-reality goggles that make it feel as if they are in the "cockpit" of the drone, which translates to video content. 'It's a completely immersive experience that'll make you feel like you're flying,' said Drone Racing League founder Nick Horbaczewski."

46 comments

  1. Battle bots in the air... by bobthesungeek76036 · · Score: 1

    What could possibly go wrong???

    --
    Karma: Bad
    1. Re:Battle bots in the air... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Given that they're small, light, and in a dedicated enclosed space far from spectators, probably less than has gone wrong with automobile racing, on occasion.

    2. Re:Battle bots in the air... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The drones could hit something. That's it.

    3. Re:Battle bots in the air... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Better than pissing money away on the dolphins.
        Why does windows 10 assume I didn't mean to curse when their spellchecker substitutes a totally non conceptually relevant word in it's place? Fuckin Indians hung around the British for too long. Seriously, is there anything more disturbing than a clueless arrogant Indian acting normally-for an Indian. And what's with the Brahmin thing? What the puck is wrong with you people?

  2. Article is Paywalled by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Can you please not link to paywalled content? It only takes a couple of seconds to find an alternate article that is probably better than anything WSJ puts out. http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/13421113/miami-dolphins-owner-stephen-ross-investing-1-million-drone-racing-league

    1. Re:Article is Paywalled by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Read the linked article? You must be new here.

  3. The obvious question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why do they even need to have physical drones? They could simulate the races on the server and stream the results to the participants and spectators.

    If you're going to geek out, don't be a wimp about it with halfway measures to pacify this or that group. Go all in, or fuggedabudit.

    1. Re:The obvious question by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 1

      The same goes for space exploration

    2. Re:The obvious question by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      Why do they even need to have physical drones?

      To encourage technological development. DARPA should be funding this. America spends over $200B/yr on manned military aviation. Next generation drones could eliminate most of that.

    3. Re:The obvious question by gweilo8888 · · Score: 1

      America spends over $200B/yr on manned military aviation. Next generation drones could eliminate most of that.

      Yeah, not so much. When have you ever known military spending to go down in any meaningful way? Next-gen drones will doubtless be more expensive for the taxpayer than current-gen tech, just because. (Sure, we might need to buy a lot more of them to ensure we keep the bill growing, but you can be assured we'll do it.)

      The only monetary advantage will be for the arms companies, lobbyists, and those taking their kickbacks, all of whom will have an even larger profit pool in which to swim. There's no way the average taxpayer won't continue to get shafted, though. The US leads the world in military spending (US$609.9 billion, or US$1,891 per capita) as of 2014, close to triple the nearest country (China, with US$216.4 billion) and there's no sign of that changing.

      Sure, in the last decade our spending has decreased a tiny fraction, but only by a paltry 0.4%. Despite not being in any actual wars right now (the arm-waving "war on terror" doesn't count), we're spending more than we were pre-9/11 *or* during the Cold War.

      http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

    4. Re:The obvious question by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      When have you ever known military spending to go down in any meaningful way?

      Yes. Military spending has declined after every major war. Military spending declined in the 1990s. Military spending has also declined considerably since 2010. As a percentage of GDP, it has declined even more. The military is under considerable pressure to do more with less.

    5. Re:The obvious question by Adriax · · Score: 0

      Military contractors are being forced to tighten their belts and only spend 50 weeks a year vacationing in the bahamas.

      --
      I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
    6. Re:The obvious question by gweilo8888 · · Score: 1

      I said "in any meaningful way". Sure, there are spikes that return to normalcy immediately afterwards, but as you can see in the graph below (corrected to 2005 dollar equivalents) US military spending has been flat or slightly rising ever since the Korean War ended. Save for two brief periods under Carter and Clinton, there has been no noticeable reduction in our military spending in the last 60 years, and our spending for the last ten years isn't far off the peak set (very briefly) during World War II.

      http://www.heritage.org/~/medi...

      Our military spending is absolutely insane. Please don't expect to tug at my heartstrings prattling on about the "considerable pressure" placed on our military when we spend a far far greater fraction of our GDP on the military than anywhere that isn't either a crackpot dictatorship or an oil-rich state that's terrified a neighbor will decide to come in and steal their oil.

      Somehow, other first-world nations like the UK, Canada, Australia, Italy, France, Germany, Japan and many others all manage to make do on 1/3 to 1/2 our spending as a fraction of their own GDP. Our spending on the military is absolutely obscene -- economies of scale due to our population and the fact that we're isolated from any countries that might wish to do us harm suggest that all else being equal, we should be spending *less* for the same level of safety not two to three times *more* than any comparable nation. Especially since the US being the world's police force and a defender of good hasn't been true for decades -- we're content to sit by and see others wronged so long as we don't lose any money from it.

  4. First World Problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Getting tickets to a show where the human athletes will be chairbound.

    1. Re:First World Problems by invictusvoyd · · Score: 1

      Welcome to the age of athletic fingers.

    2. Re:First World Problems by tompaulco · · Score: 1

      Getting tickets to a show where the human athletes will be chairbound.

      Why don't they make them computer controlled? Then it would be drone racing instead of remote control quadcopter racing. Also, the winner would be the guy who can best do flight control algorithms, instead of somebody good at shoving sticks around.

      --
      If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
    3. Re:First World Problems by invictusvoyd · · Score: 1

      They will eventually end up with drone spectators if you'd completely cut the human factor .

    4. Re:First World Problems by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      Why don't they make them computer controlled? Then it would be drone racing instead of remote control quadcopter racing. Also, the winner would be the guy who can best do flight control algorithms, instead of somebody good at shoving sticks around.

      That's already a factor, because the sticks don't control the motors directly. On an affordable radio, you get nine channels, and you have a variety of knobs and switches which can make them do stuff, but you can also just map nine controls to the nine channels and send them straight to your copter. Hopefully your receiver has a PPM output, and then it only takes a couple of wires to get the signal to your flight controller, whatever that looks like. After that what happens is up to you, AFAICT most APMs come with something in them but you can throw it all away and write your own code from scratch if you want. Then the APM has PWM outputs to your various speed controllers. And now we've reached the limits of what I know about quads :p Except that you can apparently run a 250 size off of Li-Ions, so I'm going to have to start trolling for sales on speed controllers, motors, and props.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    5. Re:First World Problems by Spencer+Drager · · Score: 1

      They run on Lipos (but you're not wrong since Lipos are really Lithium-Ion Polymer and chemically nearly identical but come in "pouches" instead of rigid containers. Also you can run quads well over 500mm size off of Li-Ion. Almost all quads are electric because electric motors can control their speed very accurately. Gas motors are not so good at that, and so most gas-powered quads run their props at constant speed and instead vary the pitch of their props, complicating the system significantly.

      About 9 controls... you can actually map more than that if you use a custom mix to make switches only take up part of a signal. Your throttle, aileron, rudder, elevator each take up one full channel because they are not on-off but can vary in strength. Most people just set up switches to take up an entire channel but you can make switches take up half a channel, or even a quarter of a channel, because the data they are sending is so simple (on/off, or hi/mid/low). So with an 8 channel receiver/transmitter, you could control throttle, aileron, rudder, elevator, a knob, and 6+ switches.

      And yes, this is already partially the case. All quadcopters have flight controllers which run algorithms to determine how much each motor should be spun based on the inputs from the human. There are many different firmwares for these flight controllers, and pretty much all implement a PID system (or offer you the ability to choose from multiple different PID algorithms). PID essentially just means how the controller calculates values to send to the ESCs and how much it tries to self-level in various regards.

  5. More challenging by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 1, Funny

    Have them fly in the open and across people's backyards. It'll be an extra obstacle once the buckshot starts flying.

  6. Power plant? Okay... by Rei · · Score: 2

    ... but surely one could make it more interesting than that. I mean, these are net-connected drones - give them a base station with a lot of bandwidth and good response time, and the drones could be almost anywhere in the world, regardless of where their controllers are. Give them a base station like a Google Loon balloon - and more to the point, deliver them to the site by balloon - and you could operate them in an area no matter how hostile (unless someone sees fit to waste a very expensive anti-aircraft missile that can reach 32km for the purpose - and if such a missile could even target something with little radar signature and virtually no heat signature). For example, the balloon could enter a war zone, drops the drones which drop down to the surface, then try to achieve some (harmless) goal in the middle of an area where people are apt to literally shoot at them - with the competing drone pilots knowing nothing of where they are until the drop. So when it begins they're given maps, whatever intelligence is available, and a challenge. Eg: "Welcome to the Donetsk People's Republic! Your mission: deliver a Putin bobblehead, intact, as close as you can to Igor Strelkov, commander of the pro-Russian paramilitaries in the region, at his headquarters at the Regional State Administration building. Your drones have been painted in the colors of the flag of Ukraine and the words 'Gay Rights Are Human Rights'. Have fun dodging those bullets!"

    --
    I'll never forget the last thing grandma said to me before she died: "What are you doing in here with that knife?!?"
    1. Re:Power plant? Okay... by timrod · · Score: 1

      But see, the question then becomes why you wouldn't do something like set up a "drone raceway" and give users the ability to control a drone there or send in their own (perhaps have two different categories, one for stock drones and one for user-submitted ones) to race. Pay $x as an entry fee and you can race a drone from the comfort of your own home computer. Given all the VR tech that's coming out at some point "soon", you could even add that as part of the experience (put on an Oculus Rift or similar headset and control your drone from its perspective).

      Heck, if you were willing to go that far you could even do drone tours of scenic areas (with controls to stop them going too far off) in the same manner.

    2. Re: Power plant? Okay... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They are not "net connected" they use 2.4 GHz RC control and analog RF video. With specialized long range equipment you can get range up to a few miles but that's about it. The stuff they run (smaller and lighter weight) probably can't get much more than 1/2 mile.

    3. Re:Power plant? Okay... by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      ... but surely one could make it more interesting than that. I mean, these are net-connected drones - give them a base station with a lot of bandwidth and good response time, and the drones could be almost anywhere in the world

      How are you planning to get signal to the drones so that screen can turn on? You'd need a high degree of autonomy to handle the inevitable lag surges.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    4. Re: Power plant? Okay... by Rei · · Score: 1

      Obviously one chooses the hardware to meet the task and not the other way around. Loon balloons are designed to basically be a floating cell phone tower. Like a cell phone tower, a tiny pocket sized device (for example, a cell phone, or a USB cell dongle) can receive the signal from dozens of kilometers away and maintain a two-way connection at 4G speeds (tens of mbps, more than enough for high quality realtime streaming video)

      Why, exactly, can this not be applied to drones? Are USB cell dongles somehow prohibatively heavy?

      --
      I'll never forget the last thing grandma said to me before she died: "What are you doing in here with that knife?!?"
    5. Re:Power plant? Okay... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most of the drones in racing right (especially at the popular 250 size) now are still using traditional RC control and analogue fpv. Even if they were net connected, latency would be a major factor.

    6. Re:Power plant? Okay... by Rei · · Score: 1

      How are you planning to get signal to the drones so that screen can turn on?

      Right where I wrote:

      Give them a base station like a Google Loon balloon

      Aka, basically a floating cell tower, with the drones using cellular dongles. And since the "tower" is overhead, it'd be very hard to lose direct line of sight; one would expect excellent signal quality (barring electronic warfare being used against the drones).

      --
      I'll never forget the last thing grandma said to me before she died: "What are you doing in here with that knife?!?"
    7. Re: Power plant? Okay... by Rei · · Score: 1

      Basically, something like this. 1920x1080@30fps, automatic framerate reduction to prevent lag, and a bit over 150ms latency with latency reduction work in progress.

      --
      I'll never forget the last thing grandma said to me before she died: "What are you doing in here with that knife?!?"
    8. Re:Power plant? Okay... by Rei · · Score: 1

      A lot of the unevenness issues of streaming video over 4G are not that the connection drops out completely, but that the bandwidth changes as the drone moves around. Ignoring the easy line of sight when your "tower" is overhead, one can deal with this problem simply by using an adaptive codec designed to deal with sudden drops in bandwidth via sudden drops in quality / framerate rather than lagging imagery.

      As for latency, it depends on what sort of latency one demands. No, you're not going to get the sort of instant responsiveness of a direct RF link, but it's still going to respond to your commands in a fraction of a second. 4G ping times of around 50ms are typical on commercial networks. With their own private "cell tower", they should be under 20ms.

      --
      I'll never forget the last thing grandma said to me before she died: "What are you doing in here with that knife?!?"
    9. Re:Power plant? Okay... by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Give them a base station like a Google Loon balloon

      Oh. Sorry for missing that. That would get a lot of attention you don't want.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    10. Re:Power plant? Okay... by Rei · · Score: 1

      Which was, of course, followed by:

      unless someone sees fit to waste a very expensive anti-aircraft missile that can reach 32km for the purpose - and if such a missile could even target something with little radar signature and virtually no heat signature

      32km isn't something you can reach with a MANPAD - even most vehicle-mounted SAMs can't hit that (for example, the BUK missile that shot down MH17 has a maximum height of around 25km). It takes a very expensive missile to hit that high. And the homing systems are designed for airplanes, not balloons of thin plastic. Just ignoring the limitations on the missiles themselves, even the targeting radars rarely can target planes over 30km, let alone balloons. Most military aircraft can't reach that high either. And it's not enough to just shoot it with bullets - contrary to popular myth, large balloons don't "pop", a hole only causes them to leak helium at a rather low rate - and it's not like it needs to be aloft for a long time, drone batteries don't last forever. With bullets, one would have to hit the electronics payload, and that's a pretty small target.

      In short, they'd have to put forth a really big expense and effort to shoot it down; it's just not realistic. Now, jamming with electronic warfare capabilities, that is much more realistic. And indeed is probably what would happen in the DNR example if they learned about it in advance - otherwise, it'd probably happen partway through the run. But other conflict locations where the paramilitaries are not/i> backed by a large state actor probably would not have any sort of effective electronic warfare capability.

      --
      I'll never forget the last thing grandma said to me before she died: "What are you doing in here with that knife?!?"
  7. Good luck by protektor · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Good luck with this. I doubt many are going to want to watch this live. The buzzing noise they make is really annoying and some of the videos I have seen have them flying so fast in small areas that it's hard to keep up with them. Maybe if you brought in better video/camera men and then edit it with live streams from the quad-copters it might be more interesting.

    I also think it would be more interesting to see computer controller racers and see the interesting technology develop which would have a lot more applications than just racing. Sort of like car racing tends to feed ideas in to the cars we drive every day.

    1. Re:Good luck by ScentCone · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If people can stand the buzzing/droning sound that accompanies many soccer/(football) matches, or show up 50-thousand at a time to watch NASCAR racing (have you ever heard that?), I think the hornet-sounding hum of a performance quadcopter is pretty much a non-issue. If people can follow and cheer a hockey game, including the high speed movement of a little black puck a few inches wide, I think a bunch of 250-mm white or fluorescent quads zipping around some crazy obstacles should be easy by comparison.

      --
      Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
    2. Re:Good luck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      NASCARs actually sound pretty good, I don't think you'll find anyone at a race that will seriously tell you they 'put up with the noise', and it's kinda dumb to compare that to the noise a drone or rc plane makes.

      However, the answer to everything is, as usual, fossil fuels. By using a can of butane and a stun gun you can have them sound and look like real jet engines - the ducted fan racers anyway. Your quads will probably sound like ass forever.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKuq8T7KMa0

    3. Re:Good luck by gweilo8888 · · Score: 1

      More to the point, they're not terribly interesting to look at, don't give a great perception of speed, and there's zero risk since the pilot isn't actually *in* the thing. If you want an idea of the total global audience for this league, look at the global audience for retro video gaming. Sure, there is a tiny subset of people who could spend hours watching someone try to better their top score on Centipede or Pac Man, but by and large the greater public couldn't give a monkey's about it.

    4. Re:Good luck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Almost noone is piping audio from their racing drone fpv feeds anyway, and the audio feed is much better used for commentary and crowd / spectator noise.

    5. Re: Good luck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I disagree. I've raced a lot of things, and I'm not going to show up with some off the shelf POS. You can bet there will be some extreme designs. Racers really push the edge, if allowed - or not!

    6. Re: Good luck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's like red bull air racing, except with toys instead of real airplanes. I'm sure it will be as big a hit.

  8. Aren't these just by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    RC Planes? What makes a 'drone' a drone is that it's being used for some specific purpose. Delivery, spying, dropping bombs, etc. Without that what else is there?

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:Aren't these just by hackertourist · · Score: 1

      What makes a 'drone' a drone is that it's autonomous. Purpose doesn't come into it.

  9. We are all thinking old school. by RebHodgson · · Score: 1

    Why do we assume it needs to be in person or live. This is the digital age. Add crazy obstacles with fire and rotating blades. At lease a few drones must be destroyed each race. Record all the video and then cut a movie for YouTube. Sell advertising. Build a following on the the web then start public events later.

    1. Re:We are all thinking old school. by meta-monkey · · Score: 1

      That was my thought. You can actually make it dangerous. Yes, sports are dangerous, but nobody's actually shooting at you during a football game.

      Even Battlebots has safety rules about what you can and cannot use as weapons because of spectator safety (and legality, and cost). But get a special permit from the government to arm robots with real weapons (maybe limit the caliber so it isn't all one-shot kills), put the robots out in the middle of nowhere and make real-life MechWarrior (but with the pilots controlling remotely).

      That's actually new. Play warfare with real munitions, but nobody gets hurt. I think a lot of people would watch the shit out of that. And eyeballs means money which means you could have million-dollar robots blowing each other up. And don't say "nobody would risk that much money!" Do you know what a NASCAR racer costs? Or good God, an F1 car?

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    2. Re:We are all thinking old school. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      At least a few quadcopters are destroyed each race now. I fly racing quadcopters (though I haven't done a race yet) and flying them is hard. The nationals were just held a few weeks ago, and in the qualifying heat that I watched, 2 of the 8 quads completed the race.

      This is not to take away from your suggestion about flaming rings and other cool obstacles, which sounds awesome.

  10. Drone Racing League Receives a $1 Million From... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Receives a $1 Million WHAT?

  11. shades of tatooine? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    this sounds like the start of the path that will lead to pod racing...

  12. It'd be more interesting if they weren't piloted by sabbede · · Score: 1

    Then it wouldn't just be a matter of who can make a faster drone, but who could program a better racing AI.