Tech It Out: Camera-enabled drone racing emerges as a new sport in China

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In our season finale of this year's Tech It Out series, we will leave the lab and join a group of drone pilots in Beijing who are on the cutting edge of competitive racing. These high-fliers may be piloting their drones remotely, but thanks to camera-enabled first-person-view technology, they've got their hearts and souls firmly in the pilot's seat. CGTN's Yang Zhao reports.

A new extreme sport is emerging.

"The speed can reach 180 to 200 Kilometers per hour."

And it's First-Person-View, or FPV drone racing.

"When you wear these goggles, it's like being inside a cockpit."

Part virtual reality, part engineering and part video game. We met a small group of pioneers of China's FPV community in Beijing, including some senior ones and witness their efforts to turn a novelty concept into a mainstream sport.

"They think there's still a long way to go."

"It's like F1 for drones, racing in the sky. It's like what you watched in the Star Wars movies."

Video game programmer Hou Guancheng still remembers the thrill when he first played a real-life version of the racing video game.

"I started to know FPV around early 2015. I saw some video footage recorded by foreigners on the Internet Right away it felt awesome."

"Foreigners really know how to have fun. That's very impressive."

Zhang Zinan and Hou Guancheng knew each other from online chat forums on model planes in 2015 when there was nowhere to buy a finished drone. The assembly and tuning of components, which can only be removed from other devices require a lot of professional knowledge. This made the model plane pilots the first drone flyers in the early days.

I'm Sun Jingqiao. I entered Beihang University in 1956. I studied aviation design.

Fixed wing and helicopter sports have quite a long history in Beijing. 80-year-old Sun is a legend in this circle.

"We set a world record between 1961and 1962 breaking the Soviets' flight record of 20 kilometres. We flew 91 km. We flew all the way to Tianjin."

Mr. Sun was among the first in China to study quadcopter and he's sticking to what he learned during his professional career.

"How come a quadcopter pilot still needs training on fixed-wings? It's all about aerodynamics. You need to know how to fly and have quick reflexes. So they're here to experience fix-wings."

An old master may be more experienced, but young apprentices tend to be gutsier.

"We tried introducing drones to them. It turned out it was a bit too much for the senior pilots."

Since its inception in the US, FPV has been not only about racing but also about a mixer of street culture and adventures.

"It's much like skateboarding. I am always comparing the FPV culture to skateboarding. There's a personality and there's a vibe that you get from skateboarding. And FPV is starting to have its own."

A way to express this spirit is to fly those places that a pilot may deem challenging but meaningful.

"We can race in Hutongs. We can race in IKEA. We can race in the Shougang steel plants. Or even in amusement parks in Beijing."

After years of being individual pilots, Hou and Zhang have grown into reputable competition organizers in the Chinese capital.

"This racing track is all designed by me."

"The best part is to see other drones to hit the wall. The crowds would cheer for that."

Andrew Camden was also invited to today's indoor race called tiny whoop. Currently, this American FPV icon is spending more of his time in China.

"All the manufacturing and innovation have to do a lot with China. Most of the components that my company makes, we have manufacturing partners in China. So this is kind of a hub of products."

Because of that, this sport emerged in the US and China almost at the same time around 2015 but the American market is much more mature than China's today.

"Venture capitalists abroad can see the future and potential of this sport. They feel the sport impresses them enough. So they support it."

Zhang thinks Chinese investors failed to realize the potential of this market because they never treated FPV as a real sport.

"This way, it's very hard to develop FPV drones in China. We'll be at least one or two years behind other countries."

Only the future will tell if drone racing will really soar to new heights in China.