Tech

The Drone Racing League just shared a video of its first race — and it looks intense

Danielle Muoio

2016-02-22T20:03:00Z

The very first professional drone racing league posted its first race video — and it was quite the nail-biter.

The DRL was announced in January as a futuristic new sport bringing together the top pilots in the world for a series of races and eventual World Championship. The first race took place in December in Sun Life Stadium, where the Miami Dolphins play, and the footage was just released online.

Although the DRL plans on exploring broadcasting or live streaming of the races in the future, for now videos will be released after the race occurs.

Here's how the first race went:

The DRL's season opener, dubbed Miami Lights, transformed the NFL stadium into the fastest three-dimensional course ever created for first-person view (FPV) drone racing.

FPV stands for first person view — the racers wear goggles that provide a live stream of what the drone is seeing while racing. This way, pilots feel like they are actually riding on the drone during the competition.

The course was a little over half a mile.

Drone pilots were asked to fly around the circumference of the stadium.

And then they had to move around a series of obstacles on the concourse inside the stadium.

The last task was to wrap around a helix-shaped staircase before one last lap around the stadium.

The toughest part? They only have two minutes to complete the complex course.

It's a good thing they're flying over 80 miles per hour!

The competition started out with 12 pilots, but only eight made it to the semifinals after participating in three heats.

Four will eventually move to the finals.

The semifinals race will be posted February 29, but there's no word yet on when the finals will go up.

The DRL has put together a scoring system that can best measure pilot skill and agility.

The pilots get 50 points each for passing two checkpoints and finishing the course.

They also get 10 points for every second they finish under the two-minute time cap.

Those with the most points after all the heats are completed will advance to the next round.

It's a tough order for the pilots. Sometimes they just barely make a checkpoint.

And other times they crash and can't complete the race.

For the first race there was a down-to-the-wire tie breaker that came out with an unlikely winner.

There will be five more races at different venues before the World Championship.

The next race will take place in an abandoned mall in Los Angeles in March, which will air in April.

You can get more information about the DRL's schedule here.

Drone Sports