Ukraine has hosted the world’s first remote-control drone racing competition, in which the drones were hundreds of kilometres away from their operators. The format is expected to help train a new generation of specialists in drone technologies. This was reported on the Facebook page of F-Drones, which co-organised the event with the Ukrainian Federation of Technological Sport.
“The main feature of the remote competition was that the UAVs were physically located at a training ground in one region, while the pilots were in another, hundreds of kilometres from the track. They controlled the drones in real time using F-Drones’ remote-control technology,” the statement said.
As noted, the pilots competed in two formats: a classic offline race and a Time Attack with remote control.
“We built the track, brought our developments and provided the technical side of both competitions. In the offline race, first place went to RetryWin (Vladyslav Liashevych, Icopter team) on our F7. The top 11 pilots advanced to the remote format. The winner of the remote competition was Eduard Alokhin ‘RSZM’ (iCopterFPV team). He completed the track remotely on the first attempt in 40 seconds. The youngest participant was 12 years old,” F-Drones said.
The organisers expect the new competition format to help attract young people and train a new generation of drone operators.
“For us, this is another step in the development of technological sport: a new competition format, new scenarios for pilots and an opportunity to engage young people with drone technologies as early as the learning and sporting stages. It is from formats like these that the next generation of operators, engineers and developers is formed. Now we have something to scale further,” F-Drones emphasised.
As previously reported, Ukrainian drone manufacturer F-Drones was the first to receive permission to export 2,000 finished drones to the Pentagon, and it also plans to launch licensed drone production in the US state of Ohio, employing 300 people.
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It was also reported that F-Drones is expanding its product range. In particular, the company recently presented the F-CAPTAIN middle-strike-class system and the updated LITAVR+ interceptor for jet-powered Shaheds.