World’s fastest filming FPV drone and how it was built

[thewas]

Quite a great engineering project, am sure @Frank Dernie will also like it for a number of reasons.

World’s fastest filming FPV drone: How it was built

Written by Tom Ward Drone masterminds have taken DIY engineering to the next level with the first drone capable of keeping up with an F1 car on the track. Here’s how they created it. A decade ago, …

www.suasnews.com

This is Formula 1 like you’ve never seen it before. The @dutchdronegods follow Max Verstappen’s brand new @redbullracing RB20 F1 car for a full lap of Silverstone’s Grand Prix Circuit. The world first uninterrupted FPV one shot was captured by a manually piloted custom built drone, designed specifically for the challenge of keeping up with the car at speeds of over 300kph.

It took Red Bull and the Dutch Drone Gods over a year to create a drone that can accelerate two times faster than an F1 car, reaching 300 km/h in just 4 seconds with a top speed of over 350 km/h. The development was accelerated by access to know-how and processes of Red Bull Advanced Technologies, a high-performance engineering arm of Oracle Red Bull Racing Formula 1 team and trialled behind the RB8 and RB19 cars driven by @liamlawson30 and David Coulthard.

 

[Killingbeans]

FPV drones have come along way. I remember watching this video years back and being instantly hooked on the concept:

Back then most of the gear was makeshift constuctions pieced together from Nintendo Wii chips and what have you.

The speeds were snail pace compared to what we see today, but it still blew my mind.

I came as far as building a tiny practice drone with brushed motors, but spent far more time picking it up from crashes than actually flying. Switched to some of the primitive simulation software available at the time, and then it really dawned on me how steep the learning curve is. And then life got in the way.

Still have my Fat Shark goggles and a box full of 90% of the parts needed for an actual racing drone. I really ought to give it a go again at some point. Probably antiquated technology by now, but if it flies it flies.

Interesting to see that the Red Bull pilot uses and old school analogue (?) video feedback instead of the fancy new digital stuff. I guess at those speeds it's better to have disturbances than drop-outs.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Brilliant

 

[Anton D]

I agree, amazingly great!