Drone racing has positively exploded in popularity in the last few years.
As we wrote here in 2018, FPV (first-person view) drone racing is now at a stage where professional competitors vie for major cash prizes. Big race comps, like those run by the Drone Racing League, have 18 professional racers and offer race winners cash prizes of up to $100,000.
What’s responsible for the increasing popularity of FPV drones?
Across YouTube and Instagram, there are now thousands of videos showcasing amazing onboard GoPro footage from racing drones as they zip, wind and flip through incredible tracks and impressive scenery. For an example of this, check out this FPV freestyle clip of a guy exploring an abandoned building with his racing drone.
It’s videos like these that first sparked Oliver’s interest in drone racing back in 2016. After seeing some cool clips, he researched and found there was a local racing community in Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city. After being inspired to give FPV racing a go, Oliver was initially racing 5-inch quads but says that he was “constantly crashing” and decided from to stick with smaller drones. He and his business partner Tristan used to race every weekend but got tired of always having to repair and solder the smashed remains of their racing drones back together.
How did the business start?
The idea for KiwiQuads first emerged in early 2018.
“We wanted drone racing to be more accessible to people by making it affordable and providing higher quality products to the New Zealand market,” Oliver says.
Oliver still works as an Electronics Technician and Tristan is a student studying towards a Bachelor of Commerce but since launching their site three months ago, business has been strong.
Customisation tool
One of the innovative features of the KiwiQuads website is that it allows buyers to easily build and visualise what their new racing drone will look like.
Oliver says that he and Tristan had both always been keen on customising drones. As they don’t have a physical store, they wanted to offer a facility online for people to see what their drone would look like as a finished product.
“We then started researching what technologies existed that could help us bring our idea to life. I stumbled upon BabylonJS, which is a 3D game engine written in Javascript,” Oliver says.
The 3D dynamic model customiser (image below), allows users to pick the colours and components of their drones. The rotating model of the drone changes as you choose different components.
“Our team’s web development background really helped us to achieve a polished product,” he says.
Oliver says that they’ve had great feedback from users all around the world trying out the customiser tool. YouTuber and FPV racer Joshua Bardwell (who has 100,000 YouTube followers) checked out the site had described it as “very neat.”
Although drone racing is still a pretty small scene in New Zealand, it is steadily growing. In the next few months, Oliver would like to host his own drone racing event. KiwiQuads will also release new features for the customiser later this year.
Who should try drone racing?
“It’s a really special experience being in the front seat of a racing drone. Many drone pilots would agree its a very unique sport and proving to be a very ‘up and coming’ community. I’d encourage anyone interested to look up some FPV videos and start with a basic drone to learn the controls and get flying, just like Tristan and I did.”
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