Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

Autonomous drone from TU Delft defeats human champions in historic racing first News - 15 April 2025 A team of scientists and students from TU Delft has taken first place at the A2RL Drone Championship in Abu Dhabi - an international race that pushes the limits of physical artificial intelligence, challenging teams to fly fully autonomous drones using only a single camera. The TU Delft drone competed against 13 autonomous drones and even human drone racing champions, using innovative methods to train deep neural networks for high-performance control. The gained knowledge on highly-efficient robust AI will contribute to many robotics applications, from self-driving cars to humanoid robots. The TU Delft team: Anton Lang, Quentin Missine, Aderik Verraest, Erin Lucassen, Till Blaha, Robin Ferede, Stavrow Bahnam, Christophe De Wagter and Guido de Croon. Beating human pilots For the first time, a drone has beaten human pilots in an international drone racing competition, marking a new mi ... Read full article.