Operating this type of drone requires a special pair of goggles, allowing users to get an immersive “video-game like experience” akin to playing a realistic racing simulator like Forza or Mario Kart.
Professional race car drivers and executives want fans to feel the rush of driving an IndyCar racing at speeds that can hit 236 mph (380 kph).
Through cinematography, enthusiasts can experience those extreme speeds.
But capturing cars traveling that fast can be difficult, says Wes Rising, a fourth-year mechanical engineering major at Northeastern University.
“In IndyCar, currently, they mainly use stationary cameras or driver car-mounted cameras,” Rising says. “With stationary cameras, you can only track a car for a handful of seconds at a time. Car-mounted cameras give you a first-person perspective, which is interesting, but oftentimes the view is obstructed by the inside of the car.”
Drones could offer the perfect solution.
Since their introduction more than a decade ago, drones have helped elevate video making to new heights, allowing creators to capture angles once thought impossible.
As part of a senior capstone project, Rising and a group of other senior mechanical engineering students at Northeastern have developed a high-speed first-person view (FPV) drone capable of traveling up to 187 mph (302 kph). By the end of the semester, they plan to bump that up to 248 mph (400 kph).
Operating this type of drone requires a special pair of goggles, allowing users to get an immersive “video-game like experience” akin to playing a realistic racing simulator like Forza or Mario Kart, Rising explains.
The idea was the brainchild of Northeastern graduate David Lobo. He’s been an avid fan of drones and flight for nearly his entire life, spurred by his father who introduced him to RC planes when he was 9. Over the years, the mechanical engineering major has built over a dozen drones and runs a drone video production company with his brother, shooting concerts, festivals and other events.
As Lobo was approaching his final semester at Northeastern last fall, he gave a lot of thought to what he wanted to focus on for his senior capstone project. Leveraging his expertise in drones, he knew there was a lot of untapped potential for drones capable of filming high-speed objects.
Lobo decided to target the IndyCar racing scene and reached out to McLaren Automotive, one of the world’s foremost luxury race car makers. He pitched them his idea of developing a drone capable of shadowing their cars during practices.
“The goal would be to film a commercial video where they could show how fast their cars really are,” he says. “Why they found that very interesting is because a lot of people don’t know what IndyCar is and how fast their cars can go.”
Shortly after Lobo proposed the project, other senior mechanical engineering students joined, including Rising, Colton Ray, Amberly Martinez, Mason Carpenter and Maya Atassi, who all will be graduating in May.
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Lobo and his team took inspiration from some pretty fast drones already in use — namely RedBull’s F1 Drone and the Peregrine 2, which holds the record as the world’s fastest drone (298 mph, 480 kph). There were benefits and drawbacks to both, the team noted in its executive summary of the project.
“The RedBull Drone is designed to shadow a Formula 1 car, so it has excellent filming quality (4K 60 fps) and maneuverability, but lacks the top speed (350 kph) we require to film IndyCar,” they wrote. “On the other hand, the Peregrine 2 is the current Guinness World Record holder for the fastest drone (480 kph). It is capable of exceeding the top speed our drone will need to hit, but it was designed for straight line flight and lacks both the maneuverability and filming quality (2.7K 30 fps) our drone needs to have.”
They took the best qualities of both in designing their drone, which has a similar rocket-like shape and from top to bottom is 11 in (288.7 mm). The drone features a 3D-printed Onyx shell and an internal frame crafted from carbon fiber. Inside, the drone has four motors, four electronic speed controllers, a power distribution board, a flight controller and two lithium polymer batteries.
“We spent a lot of time on the front end working on designing our shell, our electronics and our components,” Ray says. “We spent a lot of time making sure everything was going to package together nicely, and that the electronics we picked would be able to, at least on paper and in theory, hit the speed we need.”
There were challenges the team had to overcome in designing the drone. One of the more tricky aspects was developing a system to keep the drone cool as it reached high speeds, Atassi and Martinez explain. To account for this, the drone is outfitted with NACA duct air vents.
“That was useful for cooling our electronic components because those get a lot of amperages and current,” Atassi says. “If you don’t vent that out, it is going to overheat and your components will shut down.”
Once the designs were made and the components delivered, then came assembling the drone and testing it, he says. The team took advantage of the drone cage at the Institute for Experiential Robotics’ lab in EXP, says Mason Carpenter, a fourth-year mechanical engineering student and another team member on the project.
“The cage wasn’t big enough for a full-scale flight for what our drone is capable of, but it does allow for us to get it off the ground,” he says.
Shortly after, they took it to Northeastern’s Dedham Field to really put it to the test.
“It took us more than six months to actually be able to build this and fly it,” Lobo says. “The day we went out to fly it was an interesting feeling. I had wanted to fly it so bad for many months now, but at the same time I didn’t want to fly it. With drones, especially with prototypes, anything can go wrong.”
The team got close to their goal, hitting a top speed of 302 kph.
The team also won first place in its respective track during the Mechanical Engineering Capstone day last semester, Martinez says.
“This project has potential,” she says, adding that representatives from NASCAR have shown interest in the project. “We are also going to probably hit our goal, so we are in line for success.”
Michael Allshouse, a Northeastern University professor of mechanical engineering and the design adviser on the project, says he was impressed with how the student overcame challenges — from troubleshooting technical issues to securing testing locations for a drone.
“What was nice from an adviser’s perspective was that it seemed as if they had solid and consistent communication back and forth amongst the team,” he says.
And while Lobo has since graduated, he is still helping the team reach its milestone of 400 kph.
“What I love most about drones is how they bring together my three favorite things: engineering, flight and videography,” Lobo says. “That’s what inspired me to pursue engineering in the first place, and it’s why I proposed the high-speed drone project — to take this passion to the next level.”