Fastest camera drone vs. F1 car (ft. Max Verstappen) [video]

Another proof that life isn't fair. At the end of the day being the first or the best at something isn't enough to make you famous for that something. Sometimes, someone else beats you to mainstream fame because they either had better media connections or they just lucked out by coming out just at the right time while you were maybe a bit too early.

See various indie Steam games. 90% of them go unnoticed by the general public despite being decent and fun, but sometimes some famous streamer picks one up and then that one game explodes in popularity despite many other being better than it.

It's just how life works. It's full of randomness and brownian movement.

> The piloting is pretty damn impressive, though!

Wondering why this had to be manually piloted versus automatically tracking, possibly getting direct feedback from the vehicle about braking and accelerating and turning, so that the video would be smoother and it could fly closer to the vehicle?

I didn’t find the piloting to yield a particularly smooth video, always reacting slowly and inconsistent with its distance and angle.

It's really good marketing fluff then. Other people may have been doing this for a while, but they haven't bothered to talk about it outside their own little world.

That this is a damn guided missile. I want one.

Not John Wick perhaps, but a radar controlled machine gun

Seems sad that the first thing I thought was "bet that would be hard to shoot down" - not sure if that's more of a reflection of me, or the state of affairs. That aside, if you'd told me when I was a teenager in the 90s that a fancy RC helicopter would go faster than an F1 car before I'm even an old man, not sure if I would have believed you, we've come a hell of a long way in drone tech - and that's impressive. Kudos to you drone engineer folks.

Does it really have a lot of military applications ?

I presume weight is heavily optimized to get 300kmph. So it won’t go that fast if it carries explosives. Could be used for high value target killing. Like literally a bullet you can control, might be able to make that work.

But for reconnaissance can’t the drone just go high up ? And then can’t really be shot down with a rifle ? You just need better optics.

As a matter of fact, their phone is ringing constantly after the world watched this video.

"The phone of Thomas de Koster from Middelburg has been ringing off the hook since the video came online yesterday afternoon."

https://www.omroepzeeland.nl/nieuws/16315140/snelle-drone-va... (Dutch)

https://www.dutchdronegods.com/

One F1 lap is like 4 miles at maximum. I doubt that would be enough for recon, since you'd have to calculate the distance it needs to cover to return to its handler.

What surprises me is that these kinds of drones aren't already standard equipment. Even in the mid 2000s I thought that these types of drones were the future of warfare.

If you have enough of them you could use them to sweep out areas. Launch a bunch and have them map out the place. You can have them carry weapons and other such things, eg laser communications networks.

Back then I figured that by the 2020-2030s ships would exist that would primarily carry (larger) drones. Those drones could then carry these smaller drones into their locations to do all the things they need to do.

Not that many drones get shot down, and when it happens it’s so noteworthy that the one doing the shooting down can’t actually believe his luck. And they usually use shotguns for that, using rifles is really just 100% pure luck.

As per the speed, on their way down current (very cheap) drones are already way too fast for anyone to try and shoot them, the taking down (when it rarely happens) usually takes place when the drone is in the middle of a hovering pattern. Were the drones to always go at full speed (100 kph, 300 kph, it doesn’t really matter) then the operators controlling them would have no way to tell which is which on the ground.

This form factor is already well-established, though 300 km/h is still very fast.

Kinetic impact aside, I've seen videos out of Ukraine of this but the drones also have explosives strapped to them. Its safe to say this has already happened.

>but since they're slow, they often get shot down by rifle/small arms fire form soldiers

Do they? I have an old and basic Mavic Air, but I can't imagine the skill it would require to shoot it down with a rifle if it's moving high up in the air.

It's difficult enough to even spot it.

I'm sure they do get shot down sometimes, but 'often' enough for it to be a problem?

Ukraine AND Russia have both used off the shelf/even custom built racing drones for various "kamikaze" styled attacks. This is also one of the stated reasons from China about their recent export restrictions on drone parts. Just search for "Ukraine/Russia FPV drones".

Building this stuff is trivial too. Anyone who can solder a few components and follow a 30 minute youtube tutorial can have one of these.

I guess for military use you need both high efficiency to travel longer distances and some payload capacity to carry explosives. Off the shelf camera drones usually can't fly further than 10-15km on one charge. This is probably not enough for a lot of reconnaissance tasks.

Another problem of multicopters is the loud noise they produce, not really suitable for warfare.

I think there is a reason that most military drones are fixed-wing aircrafts, similar to regular model airplanes

I think it's pretty standard stuff. The motors are T-Motor F80 Pro 1900kv. The battery is an 8S LiPo (you can see the voltage in one of the videos). ESCs are highly undifferentiated since they're mostly similar designs running the same firmwares, any suitable high amperage ESC would work for this application.

It's the props that are most interesting to me, as this is what drives a lot of the speed capability - they're some kind of extremely high pitch bi-blades, I think 5", but I haven't figured out which yet.

I'd be curious to see their peak current draw too, and how much trouble they have with heat running F80 Pros on 8S.

F1 is a sport for billionaires, and even the racers are all incredibly wealthy/fortunate nepo babies. Imagine if every kid in the US had the privilege/fortune to race carts/cars since they were little kids. Imagine the US football equivalent, where hundreds of thousands of kids are gradually filtered out all the way up to college and then the NFL, ensuring the absolute best of the best are ultimately selected.

F1 is by comparison the least accessible sporting path in the world. The drivers who make it are great but they represent a rounding error equivalent of a potential candidate pool.

They improved a lot in the past 10ish years.

The F1 under Bernie Eccleston was criticized a lot by becoming "boring"; not only because a particular pilot's or their team's dominance, but the broadcast itself. When NASCAR had already live pilot tracking widgets and speed estimations on screen, F1 fans still looked at an outdated, pixelated racing car tyre animation, and basically zero "insights" beyond speed trap measurements.

Around 10 years ago, Liberty Media took over and now broadcasting and event marketing is "modernized". It became fun to watch races even when you are not cheering for the top pilots, simply because live data is available and better communicated, making the race more interesting to follow.

F1 is massively gaining in popularity around the world in recent years thanks mostly to the Netflix series "Drive to Survive". If you haven't seen it, it's really good.

Netflix are going to use the same template to make shows about other forms of sport.

I mean the title says fastest camera drone, which that is decidedly not. Not to say that it's a necessarily accurate title, as other commenters have pointed out.

But this isn't a comparison on a straight line, it's a comparison around a full lap with the drone not cutting corners (though also not staying within the track limits).