Autonomous drone outpaces human pilots

An autonomous racing drone named MonoRace has shown it can complete a high-speed slalom course faster than top human pilots, relying only on a single camera and motion sensor for navigation.

MonoRace uses only a single camera

Developed by the Micro Air Vehicles Lab at Delft University in the Netherlands, the drone was described in a mid-October 2026 article in Science Robotics. Unlike earlier autonomous drones, which used external sensors and pre-recorded maps, MonoRace does not rely on such external assistance.

Drone set a record at Abu Dhabi race

The drone’s performance was demonstrated during the Autonomous Drone Racing League in Abu Dhabi in 2025. It completed two laps of a course with 11 gates in 16.56 seconds, reaching speeds of nearly 102 kilometers per hour, faster than three former world champion human pilots.

Human pilots have different advantages

While human pilots have depth perception and can anticipate turns instinctively, the Dutch drone does not use pre-set markers, motion capture systems, or pre-loaded track maps to navigate the course.

Drone’s system is compact and fast

The drone’s system is housed in a compact 966-gram casing, slightly larger than a human hand. A camera at the front captures images of white gates line by line, and a neural network processes these images in real time to adjust the four propellers up to 500 times per second.