StarTalk Radio - Building a Virtual World – Drone Racing League

Episode Date: September 25, 2020

They’re fun, they’re fast, they’re drones. Neil deGrasse Tyson explores the Drone Racing League with founder and CEO Nicholas Horbaczewski, Marilyn Smith, PhD, Director of the Georgia Tech Vertical Lift Research Center of Excellence, Chuck Nice, and Gary O’Reilly. NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/show/building-a-virtual-world-drone-racing-league/ Photo Credit: Drone Racing League. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk Sports Edition. In this episode, we're talking about the DRL, the Drone Racing League, behind the controls. First, my co-host, Chuck. Nice, Chuck. Hey, Neil. What's happening?

All right. You're my favorite comedian. Did I ever tell you that, Chuck? I never told you that. Only every day, but I will accept it whenever I hear it, Neil. There you go. Chalk it up. We've also got Gary O'Reilly.

Gary, former footballer. Excellent. A pro footballer from the UK. Former professional athlete and commentator. So, Gary, always good to have you. Thank you. But none of us have expertise in drone racing. I know a little bit about drones just aerodynamically, but that's about it.

This notion that we have a drone racing league, this is out there. And so we had to bring in the person who is responsible for this fact, named Nicholas Horbachevsky. Did I pronounce that right, Nicholas? Yeah, you did. Excellent, excellent. You founded the Drone Racing Club. We call it the DRL.

Are we familiar enough? We can... On an initials basis, all right. The DRL back in 2015, that that's even a thing to do, and you're the CEO of it. Wow. You went to business school, but somewhere in there you had to know something about drones,

and Cranes voted you 40 under 40. Is that still true? How old are you now? I'm still under 40. Still in the mix there, huh, Nicholas? Exactly. Still in the mix, right on. Okay, well, I got to ask this. And you're in the Guinness Book of World Records for holder of the fastest drone. Yes. So how fast is that drone? So that drone went just under 180 miles an hour. Wow. Damn. That's pretty wild.

And is this the quadcopter or septicopter type setup? It's the Bugatti drone. The custom Bugatti drone. I'm trying to figure out the aerodynamics of getting a drone. When you look at them, they don't normally look very aerodynamic. Before we get there, Chuck, let me just ask. Sure. What were you thinking when you created this league back in 2015?

Were you thinking, this is cool. I want other people to think it's cool and I want to grow this. Was it already happening? And you said, let me organize this. Yeah, are you the Madonna of drone racing? You're like, wait, voguing is a thing. I'll just make it big.

I mean, all a lot of things. The Madonna of drone racing is not one of them. That's not one of them. Yeah, Chuck, that was a stretch. A little bit of a stretch there, Chuck. No, look, drone racing was not one of them. That's not one of them. Yeah, Chuck, that was a stretch. A little bit of a stretch there, Chuck. Okay. No, look, drone racing was around since about 2010. People, the minute they put cameras on drones,

they would let them see what the drone sees. They started flying high-speed, complex three-dimensional lines with them, and then they immediately started racing them. Wait, are you saying that before then, it wasn't common to put cameras on them, so it's not interesting to gamers at that point? Yeah, I think quadcopters really kind of came around in the early 2000s.

And people started putting cameras on them to film things. But when they put a camera on the front with a fixed point of view that fed a real-time video back to the pilot, it was the first time they gave you a perspective like you were sitting in the drone. And we always say it's like sitting in the cockpit of the drone and you need that if you're going to go at high speeds through you know complex courses through enclosed spaces things like that okay so that added a whole extra participatory dimension to it yeah yeah and it just sort of took off between 2010 and 2014 it spread all over the world there were groups that have exchanging information on the internet how to build these, where to meet up to race them,

and it was this whole underground subculture of drone racing. So the development of small optics has been the game changer in drone racing? Yeah, I think three things really drive it. One is the core technology that drove the development of drones, which is all the very small, inexpensive sensors that let you sort of stabilize the flight. The second is these very small, high-performance cameras. And then finally, the radio technology to broadcast that back to the pilots,

and whether they look on a screen or a pair of goggles, so that they can see what the drone sees in such real time, that even when the drone's flying very quickly, they can avoid the obstacles, they can navigate the space. And just to be clear, to be specific, when you say small, you really mean low mass because the thrust provided by your rotor blades can only accelerate a mass at whatever Newton's laws, right? So you want not only something small to fit on there, but it can't weigh very much. Exactly. You need a very high thrust to weight ratio because

you need to accelerate very quickly. It's your only means of stopping, too, so you need to decelerate very quickly by reversing that thrust. No, you can stop if you crash into something. That's another way. A tree will also stop. Another way to stop the drone. It might even be the most common way to stop.

Exactly. When you sat down with the concept of, right, we're going to take this and, as Chuck says, make it big, make it real and organized. The concept of doing that to actually getting finished races, drone races, was that a simple process or did that find itself difficulty? It took years. It was a very complex process. I remember, so in early 2015, I saw my first live drone race, which was a group of friends getting together in this field behind a Home Depot in Long Island. They had these homemade drones.

They put up some like pool noodles to fly through as gates. And it was very amateur. It was very sort of backyard. But it was, I just thought it was one of the coolest things I'd ever seen. There were these moments, the drones would fly by you and you really felt like you were inside Star Wars.

And I was, my thought was, how do we take this to a mainstream audience? How do we bring this to everybody in the world? Because I'm in this field in the middle of nowhere and I'm having this very cool experience. We should be sharing this more broadly. And the road from that to,

you know, you look at last year, we had thousands of people in Chase Field in Phoenix, watching a from that to, you know, you look at last year, we had thousands of people in Chase Field in Phoenix watching a drone race live, you know, fans on their feet screaming, wearing pilot t-shirts, watching this exciting race. It's just huge. And the main part of that journey was developing the technology to make it possible. That was our primary barrier to pulling it off. I wonder if something here. For so many sports, they are, let's say,

technologically conservative. If someone has a brilliant new idea, nope, can't do that. Undue advantage, no. Let's go back to the old ways and pulling teeth trying to get new technology to participate. Are there rules about the

drones that can race? Or can somebody do a rocket? I mean, are there rules about the drones that you can enter into a race? So one of the things is all of the drones are identical. So DRL actually builds all the drones, all the technology you see out there racing. So drones, the radio systems,

the timing scores, that's all stuff that we created from scratch. So it's like NASCAR, where the cars are in principle identical, so you're really testing the driver. Exactly. It's a test of pilot skill. It's spec racing. Everybody should be on an equal platform. Is there anything that they can do to give themselves an advantage with the physical drone itself?

That you allow? That you allow? Or do they have to accept your drone? They can't touch the drones. They don't even get to touch the drones at all. The league has its own pit crew that puts all the drones on the line. We want this to be an absolute test.

We want an absolutely level playing field. Because our goal at the end of the season is to crown the greatest drone pilot on the planet. And that requires everybody having the same equipment. So how do I practice if I'm an aspiring drone pilot? Or is it the fact that everybody's on the same playing field so it doesn't make a difference? It's like if you practice with one type of drone and we give you another, everybody's at the same disadvantage. Or can I go get a drone that is most like the drone you're going to give me and practice with that? And is that what

everybody does? So there's two ways. So we have a simulator in which you can fly a drone that is an exact simulation of the drone we fly in the lead. So you can get very used to the performance best of that drone. You can also make something that's sort of somewhat similar. Most of these drone pilots practice on their favorite drone that is the most convenient to go out and practice with. And they make the transition when they get into the league to getting used to flying on our particular aircraft. But once you're accepted into the league as a pilot, you get several of those drones. You get to fly with them every day. But that's a step that people make once they get into

the league. Let's go back to the bit where you say you wanted to make it bigger, bring it to a larger audience. I think Chuck would call it Madonna-fying. Nicholas, you did confirm it with us that you are the Madonna. You are. Sorry, Nicholas.

I'm sorry, Nicholas. Strike a pose. Strike a pose. It's too late. So when you're sat down with the likes of ESPN and the British sports broadcaster Sky Sports, how easy was it to convince them that what you saw flying through noodles on Long Island was just perfect for their TV screens? It was challenging.

You know, it was a funny experience going around and pitching this idea to investors or broadcasters because I got a really binary reaction. People either laughed me out of the room or they got very excited and they'd start talking about Star Wars, they'd start talking about video games they played. They'd start describing drone racing to me in these incredibly elaborate terms. And you'd say, wow, you've got very high expectations about what this is going to be. And I think people sort of fell in those categories. With ESPN and Sky in particular, we were lucky from a timing standpoint. Esports was just taking off. And I think a lot of people had laughed Esports out of the room two years before,

and suddenly it was filling Madison Square Garden and having huge broadcasts. So people were a little more open-minded to something new. They didn't want to look like a donkey twice. Right, exactly. And I think people, I always say that one of the craziest things about drone racing to me is when I started talking to people about it. As I say, people go right to pod racing and Star Wars and games they played. And you're like, wow, we have been priming people for this sport for decades

through movies, TV, video games. So people are ready for this high-speed aerial robotic racing. They just want to see it brought to life. So was there a strong age segregation here? Because someone over 70 who didn't, like, grow up with Star Wars because they predated it, maybe they don't have the – it's not, they don't feel the force operating within them to embrace what it is you're describing. Because you said it perfectly. What you've created here is the crowning, is the icing on top of a cake that you haven't had to bake, that's been in the oven for 40 years. Yeah, and there's upside to that, which is you don't have to bake the cake.

There's downside, which is, you know, when someone starts describing, you know, I would take pod racing, people always go to pod racing in episode one of Star Wars. And I would say, you know, if you look at that scene, that's a couple minute scene. It's entirely CGI, costs millions of dollars to produce. It uses camera angles you could not possibly replicate in real

life. So even if you gave me flying pods and a desert to race them in, I couldn't remake that scene. That's a very high bar of expectation. That was one of our biggest challenges creating the league is that, you know, people see pod racing. You're like, wow, you want that in real life with actual drones in a competitive sports environment and arena? That's a pretty high bar. So we had to embrace that expectation.

We couldn't fight it. But we also had to be realistic that it created a big challenge for us to get over. But back in the day with the resistance to eSport that once was, was the fact that you brought half human, half machine sport to the table, the bridge between the sort of traditional sports and eSport that made it easier to sell? It definitely made it easier. I think for people, they said, this is a real life sport. These are real drones going 90 miles an hour in real spaces.

They hit a wall, they exploded to a million pieces. It's not just showing people playing a video game. And I think for the broadcasters, the ESPNs of this world, it helped to say that. A lot of people weren't ready to make the leap to put video games on TV, but this wasn't that.

This was just a new form of racing. So often you might have a drone to film some other sporting activity and then the drone follows that sporting activity. What drone follows racing drones? So we film them in a lot of different ways. So all the drones have cameras on them. So they're filming themselves. They're on point of view. They're filming each other. So that's probably sufficient. if they all know where they are and they've seen everybody, you know, it helps.

You know, again, these are, these drones are about the size of a dinner plate. They go 90 miles an hour. They go from zero to 90 in less than a second. So they corner on a dime, the high acceleration. So they filming them is a little challenging. So we use ground-based cameras. We use very interesting cameras. We use high speed cable cameras. They can, interesting cameras. We use high-speed cable cameras.

They can go very fast to keep up with them. We've had to get very creative in how we film them. You can't use a traditional camera drone. They're just too slow. The drones will just zip up. I was about to say that. I've watched a couple of races on ESPN. And the truth is the technology for broadcast is behind you.

You guys have created something much like Formula One, but far more difficult to follow and film. The course track is much shorter, so you have a lot more action packed into a much smaller space. And more importantly, your ground-based cameras can get coming and going, and the tracking cameras can only go for a little while. But at some point, this technology is, and I'm talking about the broadcast industry technology,

is going to be to a point where it will look like Star Wars. And that's when stuff is going to get crazy. Yeah, I think you see it. I mean, our pilots go out and have fun. Sometimes you see them filming videos where they're tracking a golf ball with a racing drone and they're right behind it in the air and it gives you a shot you can't get in any other way.

And I think, you know, they're doing a good job following things that are slightly slower than a racing drone right now, a race car, a golf ball. But eventually we'll need people who can keep up with the races and track them in real time with camera drones while also staying out of the way, which is another whole challenge. Yeah. You know, it'd be cool if, you know, the fastest pitch in the major leagues is, you know, a hundred miles an hour, have a drone follow the pitch right until it gets hit. Right into the glove.

Yeah, there's endless possibilities here. And then cut to a wide shot of the drone just exploding on the face of the catcher. Thank you, Chuck, for choreographing. So has this opened up in the COVID lockdown? We've all been starved for team sports. This is something that seems like it could fill some of that gap. And has it? And will it continue? Absolutely.

You know, we're very fortunate our sport is naturally socially distanced. The pilots don't need to be immediately next to each other, not in contact with the field of play. We do, and we've got other features. You know, we've always done races without audiences because we go and race places you couldn't put an audience. You know, we've done races in places like the Biosphere 2 in Arizona where we're racing through the world's largest earth science laboratory. You can't put an audience there. So for us, non-audience racing is authentic.

And we also do simulator-based racing. So this spring when the pandemic really broke out and people had to work entirely remotely, we did an entire racing series entirely based in simulation using pro pilots, put it on NBC Sports Network, the FanDuel DRL, SimCup. And it was incredible. It was a chance to bring sports to people in real time when they needed it in a way that was totally safe, given the environment. How did your pilots react? Excuse me, Neil.

Yeah. From going with a tactile scenario, holding a control panel to working as sim and not having the reality? Isn't it the same thing? Isn't that the whole point? That the whole point is for it to be identical. In fact, we recruit pilots through simulation. So we do an open contest through our simulator. People can download an Xbox on Steam. They compete, and we whittle that down,

and the best person in the sim that year gets a contract to come and fly real drones. And those pilots do incredibly well in the real league, even if they're basically someone with a gaming background who's learning it. That was why we spent so much time and energy on the sim. We wanted something that was so one-to-one that if you learned in simulation,

you could translate those skills immediately, not just to real life, but real life at the highest level of competition. This actually replicates Formula 1 because, Neil, the drivers themselves sit in sims of the Formula 1 tracks around the world and go

with it. There's a lot of correlation between the two. What it comes down to is how good is your sim? Are the laws of physics accurately captured? Otherwise, you're not really simming anything. Yeah. However, the great part about that is you can replicate the laws of physics and then break them because you are in a simulation and then judge the pilots on how they handle the anomalies that would never occur in the physical world. Chuck, this is not the Matrix. Yes, it is the Matrix. That's exactly what it is.

We want to turn it into the Matrix. Nicholas, can you come back in the third segment? Because we have to break. And in our second segment, we're bringing on an expert on aviation simulations, just to get a sense of what those challenges are. But for our third segment and second segment, we're bringing on an expert on aviation simulations just to get a sense of what those challenges are. But for our third segment and final segment, if you can come back, that's when we sort of chew the fat and bring all the facts together and just have fun with it. So if you can hang on, that'd be great. Sounds great.

Okay, when we return on StarTalk Sports Edition Drone Racing League, we're going to find out just what it takes to simulate a flying vehicle on StarTalk. We're back. StarTalk Sports Edition. We're getting a behind-the-scenes, an inside look at drone racing. Started off talking about the Drone Racing League with its founder, but now we learned that they also have a sim racing universe that people compete in. And we wanted to get to the bottom of what that requires. So we caught up with a Professor Marilyn Smith.

Marilyn, welcome to StarTalk Sports Edition. Thank you. Great to meet you all. And you're at Georgia Tech and the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering. But that's not where it ends, okay? You're also director of Georgia Tech's Vertical Lift Research Center of Excellence. Love that. And you do research for the U.S. Army, the Navy, and for NASA.

There's more, but wait, there's more. there's more but wait there's more director of the aerospace engineering schools computational non-linear aeroelasticity lab okay and also a technical

director for the vertical flight society so let's just vertical flight simply means you are in a standing position and then you ascend. Is that what, this vertical flight. So you're ascending without the benefit of aerodynamic lift in that moment. I mean, with lift that would come from moving horizontally.

Well, that's true. Although the principles are the same. You're just using, instead of using a propeller to go in forward flight, you're transitioning at 90 degrees and using it as a rotor for vertical flight. Okay, so this, okay, so we've had, you know, helicopters for, you know, functioning, useful helicopters for most of the 20th century. What is, is there anything new going on in there now that you're at the forefront of?

What's the frontier of what it is you're advising all these people who want to know? This is the most exciting time I have ever had in my career, which is much longer than I'm going to admit on this show. That's fine. You knew the Wright brothers, did you? Well, not that bad. But, yeah, this is so exciting because between the U.S. Army building two brand new, high-speed, really advanced helicopters to replace what we've already got,

then there is this whole blast of drones or unmanned air vehicles. And then there's the whole concept of the civilian world in terms of urban air mobility, both for package flying, because you see Amazon all the time in the news and how they're delivering packages through drones. And there's this huge concept that's being developed by NASA and the FAA and great innovators all the way across the U.S. and the world about how to replace then the congestion in the U.S. with flying helicopters, either taxis or flying cars, personal air vehicles. You've probably heard of GoFly.

It's just incredible. Uber flights. Yes, and everything is changing. I mean, the one main rotor vehicle that you have that's a traditional helicopter, now you see four, eight. You see combinations vertically, side-by-side, forward, aft. It's crazy. So basically what has happened is, you know, we finally accepted the helicopter and let it be.

We're like, okay, we're not going to try and turn you into a plane, which is what it's been. Whether it's like the Harrier jet, you know, moving the jets themselves or the Osprey taking it from a helicopter, rotational wings. It's like, why are we doing all that when we could just let it be? Let it be what it is. Well, actually, we're not letting it be. We do want to fly. And there's a lot of different, what we call hybrid configurations, where it starts out acting like a helicopter. And then it has some transitional, like the transformers, where it starts out acting like a helicopter, and then it has some transitional, like the transformers, where it transitions and flies forward in forward flight, into which what we're trying to do is get the benefits of the airplane, if you will, as well as the vertical

takeoff and landing of the helicopter. And these are winged flights? Some have wings. Some have moving propulsion systems where they act as rotors and then turn into propellers. Some have combinations of both. It's really exciting because there is no limit. You know, you guys were talking with Nick about the Star Wars and everything. Well, you know, it's not Star Wars because we need air,

but kind of the same thing. So maybe more like the Transformers movies. So I think, Chuck, I think, Chuck, the point you were trying to make was that the helicopter, if all you ever had was a helicopter, now be creative with that. Right. Not trying to always say, oh, maybe I can turn a helicopter into an airplane. Into an airplane. Right. Which is traditionally what has been done in the past.

Yeah. But we're saying here that helicopter is now its own thing. And with the whole divisions, whole branches. And in fact, the U.S. Army, correct me if I'm wrong, Marilyn, is we think of the Air Force as having flying vessels. But the Army has vastly more flying vehicles than the Air Force ever had, primarily because of vertical lift helicopters. Is that it?

Yes, I think that's a fair statement. And plus, if you think about what the Army does, their vehicles are lower cost than, you know, say a fighter jet. So we can invest in more of them them and we need them because there's a lot of places, both for military and humanitarian, that helicopters can go into. You know, one of the things we're trying to do is see, can we get there faster? Can we carry bigger loads so we don't have to go in and out as much? And, you know, we see the fires in California. We see the hurricanes down in the Texas area. Those are the kind of things that we really want to access and to address. What's the power source and energy source for these? I mean, are these electric vehicles? Are they chemically powered? Are they gas? What is it?

They're dilithium crystals. Oh, of course. You didn't know this? Finally! Finally! That's the classified word. Well, I should have said that. Oops, oops.

Uh-oh, we're going to get some men in black visiting you. Exactly. Yeah, if she gets yanked off the screen in the interview, we'll know why. Right now, honestly, right now we're still in the oil and gas-powered engines. There's a lot of research going on for electric. I think what we'll see is we're going to see a lot of hybrid vehicles, very much like we see in cars first. But there is a lot of research going on.

There's even a company looking at hydrogen-powered vehicles. So there's a lot of very, very interesting research. You know, the sky's the limit. But just to be clear, when you say hydrogen, you mean hydrogen combining with oxygen, not hydrogen fusion. Yeah, no, no, no. Just to be clear. No, no, no, no.

Home fusion device. We saw that in Back to the Future. Yeah, we're not going that far out yet. Not Mr. Fusion. No, I do not want to see flying DeLoreans. No. So, Marilyn, what are your challenges, given that, dare I use the word simple,

you know, air moving over an airfoil of an airplane is simple compared to what's going on on a rotor blade. So if someone wants to simulate that, how well behaved are the aerodynamic equations that model it? When we're talking about rotors and things, we do have some simple theories that work either in hover and they're actually very good in very fast flight. So we do have those. And what's really great is that they are simple enough, or I should say mathematically fast enough, to be able to predict what's happening during flight. So we can use them in real time.

Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. But, you know, whenever you're doing a simulation, there's always a trade-off of what kind of accuracy do you need? Because what is it that you're trying to simulate? So here, what we're doing with the drone racing league, as well as the modeling and simulations that we do with the military and with NASA, is that we want to be able to predict the reactions, the forces and moments that are happening either on the rotor or the vehicle itself. And so we do have some concepts that are out there

either as traditional design tools or that are out there that can be used for any kind of simulation. So, so they are. Oh, so that's interesting. I hadn't thought about that. Of course, if what you do is accurate, you can inform the, the engineers who are designing the next craft as well as inform the programmers who are designing the next simulation.

Exactly. And it should work both ways. Yeah. That's kind of where this came into play because we were, we were actually looking and looking into the ability to use our simulation tools that we developed. They were actually developed first for army sling loads to get those, those loads out to the emergency areas. And then what happened is we had... Just to be clear, a sling load is just something that

dangles below. Yes, exactly. And then it gets dropped. Exactly. So you see the helicopters coming in. They got a big net. A big net with a bunch of boxes and stuff. A big net with Godzilla in it. Yes. That's the perfect one.

The one with the monster in it. Yes, exactly. the perfect one. The one with the monster in it, yes. Yes, exactly. So Marilyn, what do you teach specifically? Do you teach the programming? Do you teach the physics? Do you teach the engineering? What's in your program? Yes, to all of the above, actually. Good for you. So at the moment, I'm teaching both graduate and undergraduate students the basics of helicopter aeromechanics, and we call it aeromechanics because it's a combination of aerodynamics, the structural dynamics, and the acoustics, the controls, all together. So we call that aeromechanics. And for the graduate students. I'm sorry, you said acoustics.

Yes. Can you just, just for my own, you know, giggles, how do acoustics tie into this situation? For the Drone Racing League, not much. For regular applications, either military or civilian, a lot. Because first of all- Is that making a quieter, sneaky helicopter? Oh, Chuck.

Well, for military, sneakier, yes. For civilian, you don't want to live around a vertiport or in the flight path of a helicopter, just like you wouldn't for an airplane. So yes, that's important. And so- And Chuck, just to be clear, you're young, but in my day, airplanes themselves were so loud that if any airplane flew overhead, you had to stop your conversation for it to finish. And over the decades, they've gotten quieter and quieter and quieter without any fanfare and now

you don't even look up when there's an airplane there so i so marilyn i entirely if if if drones are going to be delivering goods all to all manner of people and if they are noisy nobody's going to want this absolutely absolutely and so here's what just popped into my head when you talk about all these things. I mean, just like drone racing. So drone racing, if you crash, you crash. Now the other kind of drone, that ain't so good. So are you also designing the systems that track and help pilots and drones stay on course, reach their destinations, stay clear of one another, and more importantly, stay clear of me.

You mean that navigation? Right. You mean navigation? Yes, autonomous systems as well as piloted systems. We absolutely, and in fact, after this conversation, I will go in and put a line of code in there that says, stay away. From Chuck. There you go. Chuck, you heard it here. There you go. I'm going to hold you to that, Marilyn. And you know what would be funny? Five years from now, 10 years from now, when everybody's taking drones from building to

building in Manhattan, and I walk up and I can't get a drone they'll be like yeah i'm sorry the code says we can't go near you i'll be the only guy with a restraining order only by drones it's it's the it's the chuck avoidance protocol professor when developing this sim for the drone league racing and working with these particular vehicles, did it take you somewhere where you, A, didn't think you'd go? And did it help you or did you break new ground in equations and thinking? Oh, that's a good question. Yes, we typically were solving, requiring tens of thousands of computer hours. And we tried to reduce it to get the information that we wanted and the fidelity of the information that we wanted in real time, which was a huge undertaking. So we had to take what we knew from different theories

and combine them together and make corrections based on the physics because, you know, we can't break the physics even in a simulation. Chuck, you just don't want to, Marilyn. That's all. Well, true, because if you do and you're trying to train pilots, whether it's for the Drone Racing League or whether it's for the Army, then they're not going to know the real thing.

And then there's the safety factor. But that's the key, is that we're trying to get as close as possible to realism, but still have it so that you can interact. So it has to be a real time. So that required a lot of innovation. And it wasn't just me. I mean, I have a whole team of really talented graduate students

and undergraduate students at Georgia Tech. And in fact, the person that got us hooked up with the Drone Racing League was a pilot for the Drone Racing League who is also a student at Georgia Tech. And he happened to walk by where we were trying to design a new autonomous control system using our models and got interested and said, I think this would be great for the DRL. interested and said, I think this would be great for the DRL. And so that's how we got hooked up with the DRL because before we were working primarily just for the military and for NASA. So can I ask you two scientists a question about planes and copters? You got to do it quick because we're running short on time. All right. So the thing about planes is, you know, you see them flying through all kinds of weather, you know, aside from like icing on the wings, which can be deadly, like storms, all kinds of stuff.

They even get struck by lightning. But then when you look at helicopters, it's all about like every time in this, I'm coming from the movies now, every time a helicopter is in bad weather, it crashes. movies now, every time a helicopter's in bad weather, it crashes. So have you solved that problem? And is it really that much of a difference aerodynamically that that trope, is it true or is it just kind of like a poetic fallacy? Wait, wait, Chuck, aren't you simply saying an airplane where its engines fail is a glider, but a helicopter where its engines fail is a brick? Isn't that really all you're saying? No. So, Marilyn, what are the safety, what's the safety profile of a helicopter? Well, there's something called autorotation.

And autorotation is where you let the air flowing through the rotor blades power the rotor blades as opposed to an engine. So it's not really a brick. It's a brick with kind of like small wings on it. No, it's one of those things that fall from the trees. Yeah, yeah. The early things. Well, that's exactly right. helicopter and the whole concepts came about is that way back even before in the BC area,

era let's say, people saw those and they said, yeah, can we design something that flies like that? And so they did it with toys. But during the Renaissance and Leonardo da Vinci's time, he said, well, could we take that concept and make it into a real vehicle? And that was the beginning, if you will, of the modern designing of helicopters. They didn't succeed for several hundred years, but that was where it began. Okay, let's put this to bed right now. So, Marilyn, just tell everyone standing there flat-ed, that Leonardo da Vinci's design fails to say that. Because everyone thinks, oh, he's a genius. He invented helicopters.

No, he didn't. No, he didn't. That design didn't work. He never built it. He never tested it. He would have known it didn't work. That's right. The air screw, which is what he designed, is not really viable.

What's interesting- At all. You're still trying to be nice to the guy. He's brilliant enough. You can say he messed up here. Just say it. Just put it out there. No, what I'm going to say is he didn't know enough about the physics and the mathematics at the time to be able to refine his design enough so that it was viable.

But his design does make for a great water propeller. Yes, to a certain extent. So you can design something. You need bigger power, and it's not very efficient. So let's put it this way, is that with modern technology, you can fly with an air screw. It's just not very efficient. So there's no way poor Leonardo could have made anything fly. Leonardo was a

helicopter idiot, that's all. He was such a downer on Da Vinci. What the hell? Hey, listen. He was a great innovator. He was a great designer. He wasn't an engineer. Okay. And by the way, there's really nobody around to defend him from that time.

I'm just being stupidly provocative. Nah, it is. It's totally fine. We all love Leonardo. He's joking. Everybody knows he was a genius. We all love Leonardo. He was a genius, except in helicopters, where he was a dumbass.

No, to Marilyn's point, the physics was not yet fully developed of forces and aerodynamics. Had they been, you know he would have been at the forefront of that, and he would have invented the first viable helicopter. I think that's what you're trying to say. Yeah, absolutely. And even then, if you look at all the concepts, they all tried and built upon what Leonardo proposed. We've got to bring this segment to a close. Neil, but if you look at his early drawings, you'll find he designs the first Tesla.

The first Tesla. And he calls it the Tesla, doesn't he? Yeah, but he just hadn't got to the lithium battery bear. All right, Marilyn, it's been a delight to the lithium battery bit. All right, Marilyn, it's been a delight to have you on here. We love being close to engineers. And if we can bring you on again when we have future questions about aerodynamics in sports or anywhere else, I'd be delighted to know that you're there for us.

Absolutely. It's been a pleasure and been great getting to know you guys. And, you know, Tesla on or all doctor on. Aim high is the air force. Yeah, there you go. Aim high, aim in fast. Guys, we've got to take a quick break. But when we come back, we'll enter our sort of chew the fat mode and just see what we've really been thinking. These first two segments,

uh, when we return on star talk sports edition. We're back. Sports edition. The Drone Racing League. Delighted to have had the expertise that Marilyn brought to the table on rotor lift, helicopter design, the physics, the engineering. We'll get her back.

We'll find a reason to bring her back because there's way more to learn from her. But we have back on Nicholas List, do the last name again, Horbachevsky. Got it. Horbachevsky. Mm-hmm. Horbachevsky. Horbachevsky. Horbachevsky. Did I get that right, Nicholas? You got it. You got it.bachevsky Horbachevsky did I get that right Nicholas?

you got it got it excellent excellent founder of the Drone Racing League so this is where we just sort of

shoot the shit and just find out let me ask you are you growing? is this yeah what's your height now? where's this going to be in five more years?

You know, it's hard to think back. You know, five years ago, this was nothing. And now we're broadcast in countries around the world. We have millions of people watch our content. We have, you know, thousands and thousands of people participate in our tryouts every year. So it's almost hard to imagine where this is going to go. But we want this to be a mainstream sport. us every year. So it's almost hard to imagine where this is going to go. But we want this to be a mainstream sport. And frankly, I think this is the beginning of a robotic sport revolution

that's going to come and change the way people think about sports and entertainment. Is it fair to call it sport if it's a machine that's doing the heavy lifting? Yeah, I think so. There's this huge debate over what's a sport and e-sports and regular sports. We define ourselves as a robotic sport, one where a robot is on the field of play, but it's being controlled by a person. No, no, Nicholas, we've resolved this on StarTalk in an earlier episode. You have to ask, would the Greeks have drawn you on one of their urns? And they would have as a god. They would have as a god.

I'm sorry. That is, we define that as, is it a sport or is it a not? I'm just saying, just so you know. No, let me, Nicholas, let's just give you the real deal. Neil is a wrestler, and so he's defined it

because that includes him on an urn. That's the deal. Appreciate it. All right, let's try and wander back into the present day. Okay. So let's pick up on a point Neil made earlier in the show about Drone Racing League getting a COVID bump. Has that been definable in your numbers

with the NBC Sports Network? Yeah, definitely. We have seen huge numbers. We did an all-simulation tournament that we brought up very quickly. We had over 4 million people watching that on Twitter alone. So for us, that's an out-of-season segment that we normally wouldn't do.

But it's 4 million? 4 million, yeah. The most interesting thing to me, though, is some of the stats are coming out that a large number of people were exposed to a new sport during this. And there's some recent studies that say 60% of them plan to continue to follow those new sports. So I actually think in addition to sort of the immediate bump during the COVID period, I think the long-term ramification for sports is huge. I think people are going to broaden the

sports concept they consume because of what they were exposed to during this disruption to the global sports environment. Is there any plans for you? Because, okay, I know that there's got to be a huge overlap between gamers and the people who like this sport. I don't know that for a fact empirically, but I'm just venturing to guess that, you know, that that's got to be the case. And if so, is there any plan to bring those people into the sport physically through video

gaming that you develop? Absolutely. So our fans are four times more likely to be interested in gaming than a traditional sort of big five sports fan. And, you know, we have the game, we have the simulator, it's on Xbox, it's on Steam, anyone can play it. It'll teach you how to race a drone, let you start racing against your friends. You can compete in it in our tryouts, and you might even earn a pro real-life drone racing contract through it. So it is a way to draw people in a participatory way into the sport in a very

low-friction way. They don't need to go build a drone. They don't need to go fly a field. They can just start learning to race. All right. Now, here's the real question. How do I get in on this? Let me tell you something, Nicholas, you are headed for some like out of mind success, bro. I got a 14 year old and, you know, I have to limit the amount of gaming because it's so infectious. But I mean, you know what you're doing, right? You're recruiting

and creating an entire audience. Like, that's really... That's crazy, man. Chuck, that's why he was Crain's 40 under 40. Just, duh. Duh.

We're limiting your 14-year-old's time because you want to get on. I want to play, I want to get on. Damn right. I want to play. I want to be a part of it. And I also want to own it. No, no. I want to be in Crane 70 under 70.

That's what I want to be. Nicholas, you talked about your fans. We're all wishing we can be 70 under 70. You're looking at your fans, and it's fabulous they're growing, but I'm having a thought here. Most likely poster on the wall for your fans is Elon Musk rather than Tom Brady. You nailed it. Am I right? Yeah. 100% right. Our fans, 75% of our fans are under 35, but the most interesting thing to me about them is 70% of them don't follow a big five sport. So they don't have, they're not,

they're not the people who follow football or baseball. They are the people who they're into video games or into technology. As you said, their hero is Elon Musk. It's not Tom Brady. They get a sport too, right? This is a generation that are interested in sport and competition. They're just not that interested in how far Tom Brady can throw a football versus high performance technology out in the field of play. Right. Do you think that's because that 75% of your fan base all got wedgies from the football quarterback when they were in high school?

So they have completely disaffected by big five sports. I mean, how much of it is that set? The geek set basically. Maybe it's a geek set, but I think the reality is, you know, when I think of people I know we're sitting down, we're going to talk, they're going to start talking about technology. When's the new iPhone coming out? What's Tesla doing with these cars? What's SpaceX, you know, and they're going to talk about Elon Musk.

They're not going to say, Oh, did you see that football game where this person hit that person harder than somebody else? They're just not as interested in that. It's not, sports are part of your lifestyle and our lifestyle is kind of techno centric. So now, but, but the interesting thing is when you look at the emergence and the ascension of the X games, they followed that same, those same characteristics of the fan are present there as well.

They are not nearly as likely to watch bid five sports or to be as interested as they are in, you know, the more extreme sports. Do you see any overlap with that? I'll call it that fan base and your fan base. So our fans probably have less overlap. So the majority of our fans are sort of that Gen Z type. They're less into extreme sports. That is found less of a foothold with that generation. But again, I also think, you know, you think about when the X Games came up, people were skateboarding outside. Their lifestyle was about those alternative sports, about adventure and exploring. You know, our fans' lifestyle is about technology. It's about progress. It's about STEM. It's the things they really care about. and this is a sport that pulls in those other aspects of their life and then wraps it in high-speed racing

competition, which makes it very entertaining. So I wonder if your sim racing was as successful or competitively successful to the regular racing, could that be the beginning of simulations in every sport? I mean, look how successful the home game versions are of the NFL or the NBA. If those were taken up a few notches, might people just sim everything and not even look at the real people playing the game if they get the physics of all the mechanics and everything correct. You know, it's funny. I say this sometimes.

I have walked by a TV that was showing DRL and I've had to look twice to decide if it was our sim or real life. And if you could do that with every sport, I do think it starts to blur together. But we talk about this a lot, which is the key thing is for our fans, they don't care.

We talk about this sport being on the blurry line between the digital and the real. We seamlessly move between the two in the way that their lives seamlessly move between the two of them. If you talk about them chatting with their friends on Facebook versus talking in person, they don't draw some bright lines

saying this one's better than that one. And I think the key is, especially for Gen Z fans, authenticity is so important. Our sport authentically integrates simulation in real life. And I think that's where sports are going to need to go. You know, F1 does a great job because they have sim racing real life. If you take basketball, there's less sim involved. They're going to have to explain to fans why this is connected.

However, I will say this. The ESPN did run a video game, NBA 2, on their airwaves, and it rated. So there is an appetite for this. Wait, wait, no, no. It's because there was nothing else to eat. It's the middle of the night. You're looking in the refrigerator.

So you're like, wait, so what's he saying? There's a carrot, and there's a pickle. Pig's knuckles are good to anybody who hasn't eaten in five days. Thank you. So don't be telling me. Don't go there. If we get better computer graphics, are we there then? Are we there yet?

Are we still a long way off? I think it's very close. But again, to me, the more interesting thing is what does simulation do? It moves the participant away from where the action is taking place. But then we go back to the next level, which is we then are controlling a real life robot. Simulation is one step. So simulated, say, NFL games in a video game, it's mad and everyone's playing. What if the next step is robots on the field of play actually competing, being remotely controlled by people? And then

you start feeling that you think you can't do otherwise, right? They can jump higher, they can hit harder, they can throw the ball further. And it's pretty exciting. And it's real. There is still something about watching something in real life that is very attractive to fans. That sort of, you know, that excitement about being in the real arena. And I think that's where this goes, right? The minute you can simulate it perfectly, then you pair it up with robotics technology and you're at a completely different level of sports and entertainment. But what makes DRL so captivating for a younger audience is the fact the race takes about, what, a minute, minute 10? Yep. And it's rinse-repeat. How many... Wait, it's not three hours long like a baseball game? Exactly. Right? So how many of this audience that you're capturing are going to want to do three hours of dedicated viewing, whether it's real or otherwise? You've capturing a market where an attention span is shorter.

are made up of many, many races. And we talk about it. You know, they still, people still watch our full multi-hour broadcast on NBC or NBCSN. We think of it as like lean in, lean out. For one minute, you are totally in, action's happening. It stops.

Then you can lean back. You can chat with your friends. You can watch the replay. And then you're back in again. I think that viewing phase is actually what people really like about the TRL format. Not the fact, I mean,

it's not like our entire event is one minute long and you only know one minute attention span. It's that you, I'm not asking you to, you know, I think this is one of the challenges with things like NASCAR, where every second you're supposed to be zoned in, every second counts equally. That's not really in sync with our life, where we're on multiple devices, looking around, moving around. People like that punctuated viewing experience. And by the way, you have to understand that DRL, just like anything else, it's about drama. So there are storylines that have developed. There are guys that are like, you know, super match rivalries. I mean, all these things, once you get into the sport,

become part of the soap opera type narrative, that's a part of every sport. When the Philadelphia Eagles play the Dallas Cowboys, you know, people who aren't fans of either are excited for that matchup because they're known to go at each other so viciously. So these become like the psychological attachments to a sport that reside outside of the sport itself. And I think you guys, of course, would have the same thing happen to you. Nicholas, at the beginning, do they stare each other down at the weight table? Oh, yeah. They do.

And a lot of trash talk. They show off their thumbs. Trash talk. Look at my thumbs. Right, yeah. They're getting each other's heads. Look, I think Chuck's dead on, which is it's about the rivalries.

Ultimately, it's about the thrill of sport, which is the same everywhere, right? Competition is ancient. The playing field, the battleground just keeps changing. And that's what keeps what we find exciting. And the truth is we have intense rivalries in our sport. And I think what's important when people who look at the sport with some skepticism is to appreciate is that they, oh, well, they're controlling a robot with their thumbs and you're like, but for our fans, it doesn't matter. That rivalry is real. That skill is real. They translate that skill to the real world.

They go out and do things with drones that make you think they have superpowers. That matters to our fans. But to your fans, are the heroes the pilots or the engineers? I actually think there's three heroes in our sport. There's the pilots, there's the engineers, and there's the drones themselves. I think people anthropomorphize the drones. They're actually cheering for those three heroes in our sport. There's the pilots, there's the engineers, and there's the drones themselves.

I think people anthropomorphize the drones. They're actually cheering for those drones as they're flying. They love the engineers. Our pit crew is a very popular segment when we put on TV for one or two. How do we hand build every one of these drones? We hand tune them. And then the pilots themselves have the skill. And again, I think for our fans,

it makes total sense, right? People are fascinated by the engineers that are building their technology as much as they're enjoying the technology themselves. And that's completely consistent with everything else you've described about the sport and the fan base. So we actually, we're out of time. We got to sort of land this drone.

Ha! See what I did there? Look at that. Let me just get Nicholas's yes or no to my following comment. Ready? You know, Gary and I were old timers. When we grew up, if you wanted to say someone was clumsy, all you had to say was that they were all thumbs.

But I haven't heard that much lately. So now if you say someone is all thumbs, is that the highest compliment of their dexterity that you can give them? I think so. Okay. I was just wondering. I mean, you know, there are guys out there making millions of dollars a year. I was about to say, that's with their thumbs.

And that's why. That kid is all thumbs, and he has a contract. Talk to the thumb. Talk to the thumb. Talk to the thumb. There you go. All right, Nicholas, great to have you on. And good luck with this. And let's hope you stay 40 under 40 as long as you're under 40.

And by the way, Nicholas, even after 40, just stay there. So, Gary, always good to have you. Pleasure. Chuck. Always a pleasure. Alright, guys, thanks for being on. This has been StarTalk Sports Edition Drone League. Till next time, I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson

bidding you to keep looking up. Bye.