第二屆美國全國無人機錦標賽（National Drone Racing Championship）于8月7日在紐約總督島拉開了帷幕。最終的勝者名為扎克里·泰勒，他的比賽用名是“A_Nub”。不過最大的新聞不是誰獲得了冠軍，而是這項賽事在ESPN3頻道進行了全程直播。

你可能都不知道去年夏天在薩克拉門托舉行的第一屆美國全國無人機錦標賽。當時有120人參賽，幾乎沒有觀眾。也幾乎沒有人觀看今年3月在迪拜舉行的世界無人機大獎賽（World Drone Prix）。當時有250支隊伍參加了比賽，獲勝者是一名來自英格蘭薩默塞特的15歲男孩，他贏得了25萬美元的獎金。

不過無人機競賽已經有了牢固的群眾基礎——每個月都有數十場當地和地區的無人機比賽。全國無人機錦標賽的舉辦方是一個名為無人機運動協會（Drone Sports Association, DSA）的組織，他們正在前所未有地努力將這項運動推向主流。

盡管無人機競賽的歷史很短，但它的起源仍是個謎。無人機競賽聯盟（Drone Racing League）的首席執行官尼克·侯巴祖斯基表示：“大約四年前，你就可以在澳大利亞看到這種類型的比賽。”值得注意的是，他們沒有舉辦這個周末的全國無人機錦標賽，可見無人機如今不僅是一項運動，還存在許多互相競爭的職業圈。侯巴祖斯基補充道：“約兩年前，你可以看到有很多社群開始在網上形成——論壇的帖子，怎樣打造一架無人機，可以在哪里參加比賽?！彼幕纠砟罹褪亲屢蝗簾o人機愛好者一起玩。你可以開辟一塊賽場。你可以通過虛擬現實眼鏡，從無人機前面的攝像頭上得到實時圖像反饋，看到飛行時無人機的視角。這被稱作第一人稱視角（FPV），它讓你感覺自己就坐在無人機里，或者你就是無人機本身。

隨后，你就可以操縱無人機以大約每小時80英里的速度繞著場地飛行。它的聲音就像憤怒的機器人蜜蜂，尤其是在低速彎道上，也會出現很多撞機事件，不過非常有趣——人們覺得這就像是在打電子游戲。

無人機的操縱也比看起來更難——它可不像那些售貨架上的遙控飛機?？刂颇Ｊ揭獜碗s得多，而且是手動的。這可不是手機上裝個應用就能解決的事情，你需要使用一個碩大的遙控器，同時操縱兩根搖桿：左搖桿控制油門和偏航，右搖桿控制俯仰和橫滾。第一次操縱無人機飛行就讓它停在空中的難度，就仿佛將F1賽車開出維修站而不讓它熄火一樣。侯巴祖斯基表示：“這涉及許多計算，你需要在三維方向上進行迅速操作。你看那些優秀的無人機操縱者，會感覺他們仿佛在使用原力。”

人們普遍認為，對無人機操縱者而言，這就是一場心理游戲：你必須要有碳素纖維般的神經，讓你的手指在競速環境下保持穩定。來自愛達荷州博伊西的康拉德·米勒是四個孩子的父親，這次以Furadi的名字參賽。他表示：“在其他競賽中，你通常需要的是粗大運動功能。例如我參加摩托車賽，我感到很緊張，但我可以讓全身來控制摩托車。但在操縱無人機時，我只能用自己的拇指。當腎上腺素在你體內大量分泌時，你很難控制住你的手指?！?Furadi在這次周末的比賽中進入了決賽，最終獲得了第四名。

無人機競賽難以完成，也難以觀看：無人機太小了，外型也很像，跟蹤他們的移動甚至搞清楚是誰贏了，都不太容易。在專業的比賽中，無人機通常會裝上鮮艷的發光二極管，讓你區分它們。但對于努力想將無人機競賽推廣成為大規模商業聯賽的推銷商、直播商和其他人而言，這是一個很大的挑戰。它的門檻很高：新興職業聯賽有著很高的夭折率——每一個電子競技聯盟（Electronic Sports League，蓬勃發展）和世界沖浪聯盟（World Surf League，蒸蒸日上）的背后，都有一個全國漆彈聯盟（National Xball League）。

到目前為止，無人機競賽可能比虛擬現實和增強現實等直播和現實技術超前了一兩年。這些技術會讓它成為不容錯過的娛樂賽事。無人機運動協會的主席和首席宣傳官斯科特·萊弗思蘭德表示：“我們將要來到一個多流媒體、多屏幕、多轉播的時代?！彼J為，未來在這種混合現實的賽事上，觀眾可以虛擬遠程地觀看賽事?！叭绻阌萌庋劭促悎?，基本上只能看到四架無人機。但如果你戴上了全息透鏡，可能就會看到12架飛機。你還可以看到所有得分、各種排名，哪架飛機是誰的，它們在哪里，誰暫時領先?！笨紤]到參賽的無人機本質上就是飛行計算機，這很利于高科技創新。萊弗思蘭德稱：“這是一項21世紀的運動。它就是為此誕生的。這就像《威龍猛將》（Running Man）——阿諾·施瓦辛格死而復生！這就是“饑餓游戲”（The Hunger Games）！”（這里需要說明：阿諾·施瓦辛格目前尚在人世，“饑餓游戲”本身是反烏托邦的暴行。不過你可以領會到他的意思。）

不管怎么說，目前的商業趨勢對他們十分有利。今年的全國無人機錦標賽吸引了包括AIG和GoPro在內的頂級贊助商。NPD Group的數據顯示，截至今年4月的過去半年中，無人機的銷量是一年前同期的四倍。聯邦航空局（FAA）估計，光2015年的節日季，美國人就購買了100萬架無人機，而2016年節日季的銷量預計將達到190萬架。無人機運動協會計劃于今年10月在《侏羅紀公園》（Jurassic Park）的拍攝地：夏威夷古蘭尼牧場（Kualoa Ranch）舉行世界無人機冠軍賽（World Drone Racing Championship）。我們可以預計，屆時主辦方一定會不吝成本的。（財富中文網）

譯者：嚴匡正

The second National Drone Racing Championship was contested on August 7 on Governors Island in New York City. The winner was one Zachry Thayer, who races under the name “A_Nub.” But the biggest news wasn’t who won. It was that the whole event was streamed live on ESPN3.

You may not have realized there was a first National Drone Racing Championship—that happened last summer in Sacramento, and while around 120 people competed then, almost nobody saw it. Almost nobody saw the World Drone Prix in Dubai this past March either, although 250 teams entered and the winner, a 15-year-old boy from Somerset, England, took home $250,000.

But drone racing already has deep grass roots—there are dozens of local and regional drone races every month. The Drone Nationals which are run by an outfit called the Drone Sports Association, or DSA, are the biggest swing anybody has taken yet to bring the sport to the mainstream.

As young as it is, the origins of drone racing are still shrouded in mystery. “About four years ago you started to see stuff out of Australia about it,” says Nick Horbaczewski, CEO of the Drone Racing League, which notably did not run the Drone Nationals this weekend—not only is drone racing now a sport, there are several competing professional circuits. “About two years ago you start to see communities forming online—forum posts, how do I build a drone, where can I race it,” Horbaczewski adds. The basic idea is, you get a bunch of drone flyers together. You lay out a course. You route the video feed from your drone’s forward-facing camera through a pair of VR goggles, which gives you a drone’s-eye-view of the action. This is called first-person view, or FPV, and it makes you feel like you’re inside the drone, or possibly like you are the drone.

Then you fly the drones around the course at around 80 miles per hour. They make a noise like angry robot bees, especially on tight corners, and there’s a lot of crashing, but it’s hugely fun—people describe it as like being in a video game.

It’s also harder than it looks—racing drones don’t work like those easy off-the-shelf ones. The control schemes are much more complex and hands-on. Instead of an app on your phone you use a fat remote control with two joysticks which you manipulate simultaneously: the left stick controls throttle and yaw, the right stick handles pitch and roll. The first time you fly a racing drone you’ve got about as much chance of keeping it in the air as you do of driving a Formula 1 car out of the pits without stalling. “There’s a lot of calculations, and you’re doing it in three dimensions at very high speed,” Horbaczewski says. “When you watch the really good pilots, it’s like they’re using the Force.”

For the racers it is, by all accounts, as much a mind game as anything else: Uou have to have nerves of carbon fiber to keep your fingers steady under racing conditions. “In other things where there’s competition involved it’s usually gross motor functions,” says Conrad Miller, a father of four from Boise, Idaho, who flies under the name Furadi. “If I’m racing a motorcycle, I’m nervous, but I’ve got my whole body to control this thing. When I’m flying a drone I’ve only got my thumbs. When you have all that adrenaline coursing through you, it’s hard to control your fingers.” Furadi made the finals this weekend and finished fourth overall.

If drone racing is hard to do, it can also be hard to watch: the drones are small, and they tend to look a lot alike, so it’s not easy follow the action or even tell who’s winning. In a professional race the drones are usually equipped with bright colored LEDs so you can tell them apart, but it’s a major challenge for promoters and broadcasters and everybody else who’s trying to turn drone racing into a major-league business. The bar is high: there’s a high rate of infant mortality among newfangled sports leagues—for every Electronic Sports League (booming) and World Surf League (thriving) there’s a National Xball League (paintball).

So far drone racing may be running a year or two ahead of the broadcast and display technology, like VR and augmented reality, it will need to make it must-see entertainment. “We’re going to be entering into the world of multi-stream, multi-screen, multi-broadcast,” says Scott Refsland, the DSA’s chairman and chief evangelist. He imagines a future scenario of blended-reality events where audience members can race along with the pros virtually and remotely. “If you looked at a field with the naked eye, you would just basically see four drones. Whereas if you put on something like Hololens, now there’s 12 drones racing, and you get all the markers, all the various leaderboards, who’s what, who’s where, who’s in first.” Given that the racers are already essentially flying computers, it should lend itself well to high-tech innovation. “It’s a 21st?century sport,” Refsland says. “It’s made for that. It’s?Running Man–it’s like Arnold Schwarzenegger come to life! It’sThe Hunger Games!”?(It could be argued that Arnold Schwarzenegger is in fact already alive, and the Hunger Games were actually a dystopian atrocity, but you see what he means.)

The business trends are in their favor, anyway. This year the Drone Nationals attracted some blue-chip sponsors, including?AIG?and GoPro. According to the NPD Group, drone sales over the six months ending in April of this year were four times what they were in the same period a year ago. The FAA estimates that Americans bought a million drones in the 2015 holiday season alone, with 2016 sales projected at 1.9 million. The DSA is setting up a World Drone Racing Championship in October, to be held at Kualoa Ranch in Hawaii, where?Jurassic Park?was filmed. We can assume that no expense will be spared.