National drone racing championship comes to Carolina
Students and staff helped put on the event that attracted nearly 60 pilots from universities nationwide.
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Anyone listening with eyes closed at Chapel Hill’s Horace Williams Airport on April 6 might have thought the ever-present buzzing sound was part of a beekeeping convention. With eyes open, they could see plenty of drone flights taking place — without any hives or honey involved.
“Drone racing is kind of funny to explain,” said Pedro Caceres, a student at Northeastern University who made the trip to Chapel Hill to compete — and ultimately earn first place —in the 2025 National Collegiate Drone Racing Championships, held in Chapel Hill. “The biggest challenge of a race like this is keeping the mental aspect of it under check. That’s honestly even harder than building the drones or making the software work on them. It’s all really a mental game.”
But physical skill certainly plays a role. All of the nearly 60 pilots from universities around the country used precise finger movements on remote controller joysticks to fly their custom-built, quadcopter drones through a series of obstacles.
Each drone has an onboard camera that sends a real-time video feed to a pair of virtual reality-style goggles worn by the pilot, which can then be shown on other screens. That’s a key part of the racing experience, given the small size and speediness of each drone.
“They’re blindingly fast,” said Joseph Sharp, the fabrication education specialist with the Lampe Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at Carolina and NC State. “It’s almost impossible to watch them from the sidelines. What you have to do is pull it up on a big-screen TV, and that way you can see exactly what the pilot is seeing.”
In addition to the obstacle course they saw through their drones, many of the pilots saw Chapel Hill for the first time. Carolina joined other universities, including Georgia Tech and Purdue University, in hosting the National Collegiate Drone Racing Championships.
“I think it’s a big deal,” said Susan Cohen, director of the Carolina Drone Lab and associate director of the UNC Institute for the Environment. “The enthusiasm by the schools and the racers sort of communicates how important it is. Thanks to Carolina for hosting something a little bit outside the norm.”
Carolina doesn’t have a drone team of its own yet, but Sharp has been hard at work to get one started. Hosting an event like the National Collegiate Drone Racing Championships could be a major boost to those efforts and building Carolina’s reputation as a hub for drone-related innovation.
“With the push towards engineering at UNC, this is a great opportunity for us to show off our skills, what we can do and host it, and bring some attention to the sport,” Sharp said. “Drone racing is accelerating exponentially.”
