People commonly use drones for leisure like taking pictures. Some use it for business like delivery of goods. But there are others who use this flying robot for racing.
It is this sport that has allowed the new Guinness World Record for the “fastest ground speed by a battery-powered remote-controlled quadcopter.”
The Drone Racing League (DRL), which is headquartered in New York City, devised a drone called the RacerX to fly as fast as 179.6 mph at only 800 grams. This feat was accomplished in Cunningham Park in Queens, New York with a Guinness World Record representative to verify the speed.
Photos by DRL
DRL developed RacerX to be powered by batteries and controlled by a remote to get the world record.
Its first prototype burst into flames when hitting its highest point of acceleration, but the designers, led by Ryan Gury as its Director of Product, hand-built another one to hit the record speed.
CEO and Founder of DRL, Nicholas Horbaczewski said, “We’re thrilled to put our proprietary technology to the test, as we’re all about speed and pushing the limits of drone design here at DRL.
“The record-setting RacerX represents the culmination of years of technological innovation by our team of world class engineers, and we’re very excited to unveil the fastest racing drone on earth,” he added.
RacerX’s record was made after it was made to fly its fastest back and forth over a measurement course of 100 meters. The official record set was the average of the top speed achieved on each of those flights, which was 163.5 mph. It was mentioned earlier that it went as fast as 179.9mph.
See it fly in this video:
Video by DRL
That’s incredibly fast compared to the speed of commercially available drones like the DJI Phantom 4 which can only fly up to 44.7 mph.
No previous record was made for this category, but Guinness mandated that the minimum speed requirement for the fastest quadcopter should be at 128 mph.
Photo by DRL
DRL is only about two years old. Now it is hosting a global series of six quadcopter races, the Allianz World Championship, which can be viewed over ESPN and Sky Sports among other leading broadcast channels around the world.
Source: Tech Crunch
