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Drone Racing League Wants To Be the Next NASCAR (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The Drone Racing League has secured a series of significant investments that it hopes will be enough to turn drone races into a spectator sport. The quadcopter drone racing scene has only exists for a few years, so it's still fairly disjointed. Rules and standards vary between organizers, so it can be hard to have fair races. The DRL aims to fix that. In doing so, it hopes to take lessons from NASCAR and the growing e-sports leagues to find an audience. "Often, pilots wear virtual reality goggles that receive a feed from the camera embedded on the drone and maneuver as if they were in the craft itself. That first-person feed is also recorded and used as raw material for the content produced by the Drone Racing League." The high speeds combined with the ability to make interesting (and photogenic) courses may appeal to people who find car racing too boring.
You mean the sport where the technology used in the cars is basically unchanged in the last 50 years (I believe NASCAR is close to the only professional racing league anywhere in the world that still uses carburetors on their cars...)
Better check with Chuck Schumer to make sure its ok
Now that might attract an audience . . . two drones trying to knock each other out of the sky.
Sponsored by DARPA . . .
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This is spoken like someone who's never been to a race. The cars (while mostly old technology) are being pushed to the edge and the drivers are in the car so if something goes wrong, they could, and have, been killed. The engines are powerful enough that the ground shakes. Look, I'm not a huge fan of NASCAR, but even I can see what the draw is, and I just don't see it with drone racing. I'm not saying drone racing won't have an audience, but looking at NASCAR for inspiration doesn't make much sense.
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Because it is about flying, not about radio control. Think Star Wars pod race/death star trench/etc kind of flying, rather than boring 'safe circle' racing. Remote control is just a side requirement, because you cannot make these kind of race safe enough to put people inside helicopters racing through narrow canyons, but you can accept 70% 'fatality' rate on drones.
As for existing R/C vehicles, let me guess, they were trying to recreate real race conditions as much as possible, just in smaller scale, rather then trying to innovate? Because they were more 'I'm too afraid to drive real car race, so let's pretend' camp rather than 'real car races are way too boring and safe, let's use robots so we don't have to worry about accidental deaths'? If anything, I would rather compare it to all the robot-fights leagues which are out there - just taking it into air and focusing more on racing than fighting (we will see how much more).
You mean the *next* next NASCAR... I have it on good authority from 2005 that the Rocket Racing League is the *next* NASCAR.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/s...
They seem to think everything they think up is new and unique and has never been done in the history of humanity before. Drones are just a special type of R/C helicopter with auto stabilisation, but don't tell them that. They think they're an entirely new type of vehicle. Bless.
"Because it is about flying, not about radio control."
You ever tried flying a proper R/C helicopter or plane? Its a damn site harder than a computer stabilised drone my friend.
I would so much like to get into drone racing, have VR goggles, 3D camera on the drone... I'd have a lot of fun. But, also, I think I would quite enjoy watching VR feeds of others racing around, or even visiting/flying around interesting places. Seems like we are nearing the time when this kind of stuff could become feasible.
The thinking of just plain old racing is limited. As pilot safety isn't an issue, taking out other drones in the course of the race ought to be thing.
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Yes I did. I have not actually ever tried to fly a drone yet, but that is irrelevant.
Has anybody tried to do interesting race competition with non-trivial tracks for R/C helicopters or planes?
Not gonna take off.
That newfangled technology stuff can't hold a candle to our hero (insert name of some guy in a space suit with more ad stickers than your average porn page). And if he can't die for our entertainment, where's the fun?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Because it's "with a computer".
You just wait 'til someone figures out a way to put "on the internet" on top of that!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They're not trying to reinvent the wheel, nor have they made any claim about inventing R/C racing. They're trying to create a business modeled after NASCAR so that they race drones as a career rather than just as a hobby.
People don't watch NASCAR to see cars go round in a circle a few hundred times. They go to see the crashes. It's the adrenaline from the potential of an accident by having so many cars going together so closely at such high speeds that attracts people. And because the drivers are in the car and in danger the attraction is even greater. There's no way racing drones is going to recreate that when it's just a chunk of plastic on the line.
The title of "Next NASCAR" was claimed a while ago by the Rocket Racing League with their manned, rocket powered aircraft.
which doesn't seem to be doing much in the way of racing nowdays.
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Won't be many participants unless this is all done inside. Because if they're flying outdoor courses, the operators have to be actual certified pilots (because this is a commercial activity). If they're doing it for fun, that's different. But the FAA considers the fact that flying the exact same RC aircraft in the exact same way in the exact same place while following the exact same safety procedures to be so much more dangerous if you're paid $5 to do so, that you must stop what you're doing and go learn how to fly a Cessna, first. Then you can go back to flying your 250g plastic quad copter legally, because that general aviation certificate definitely will make that $5 safer to earn (unless you want to fly, say, an ultra-light with an actual human being aboard, then there's no need for certification). But if you don't make any money at it, well, then there's no need to know any of that stuff. Because, FAA.
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So pit stops are now what...battery and rotor changes?
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"non-trivial tracks"?
This is what I hinted at in my original post - that it opens possibility of doing more enclosed tracks, with things like canyons, tunnels, windmills etc, turning it into crossover between minigolf and StarWars1 podrace, rather than 'fly in circle around these sticks 5 times, fastest guy wins'.
And will never be NASCAR.
There are RC Air races already, Drones are less entertaining than a standard RC air race because the drones fucking fly themselves, it requires you point in the right direction, not actually fly. The electronics do the flying.
I've been 'racing' RC cars, boats and aircraft for literally 20 years. Drones aren't magically more entertaining thats going to draw people into it.
No one gets hurt in a drone race (no more than spectators at a NASCAR race, for certain). People expect to see carnage and damage that is painful to someone, even if that pain is purely financial. Completely destroying a racing drone costs less than most NASCAR fans will drink in beer while tailgating (And I know how much they cost, I race them!)
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In order to replicate NASCAR you'd have to replicate the ability to "bump", "rub" and mash into each other without crashing most of the time.
Rotor blade based drones will probably not cut it.
So? I didn't say they didn't exist.
NASCAR accounts for about a billion dollars in profits every year. The people organizing this want to try to replicate that success with drone racing. It's the ever-so-profitable business aspect that they're trying to make happen. Saying that R/C racings exists and some individuals have made money off of it in the past does not change the fact that nobody has made a major spectator sport out of it.
A damn site is where you're posting.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
There's no fun in watching drones do circles.
And I'm talking about the cars.
Well, there's the Red Bull Air Race, with manned planes.
The real reason quadcopters are so much more popular than planes/helis for FPV racing is not ease of control, it'and that they're so much cheaper+easier to repair after crashes. Planes have fragile wings and control surfaces, Helis have lots of moving parts that need careful setup/tuning to fly well. But quadcopters... if you've got a small quad with a tough 'racing style' frame, most crashes will just break cheap and easily replaceable propellers.
You can add a stabilisation system to an RC plane or heli these days. Or you can fly a quadcopter with auto-level turned off, which is quite similar to flying a heli.
The best FPV quadcopter pilots have some serious skills: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It might be great at first, but eventually it will become dominated by money, just like every racing sport did. People are trying get like made to revitalize grass-roots racing, but tracks keep shutting down. It gets to the point that the guys with a few times the budget of the rest far outclass the others. As soon as it becomes a profitable business to be the provider of the best performing parts and drones, the garage tinkerers will be left in the dust unless they have the dough.
Coming soon to an Amazon delivery drone near you!
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Then it's like various NES racing games
If drones have Facial recognition software they'll become ultimate killing machines;
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