A father and son team from Worcester has broken the Guinness World Record for the world’s fastest drone.
Luke Bell and his father Mike managed to achieve an average speed of 480.23km/h with their battery-powered, remote-controlled quadcopter.
The previous world record was set at 360.50km/h.
The local drone builders say their creation can accelerate from zero to 300km/h in just two seconds and reach a theoretical top speed of 510km/h.
Luke says: “Last year I created the fastest drone in the world, but I always felt like it was a kind of prototype and not quite fast enough.
“This year my dad and I decided to improve every aspect of the original Peregrine drone to create an epic successor. And yes, this drone is even faster than the Red Bull Formula 1 drone!” he says, referring to Red Bull’s 350km/h drone that chased Max Verstappen’s F1 car around the track.
The pair spent around four months working on their latest quadcopter, and have documented the process in a YouTube video.
Guinness World Record confirmed the record was achieved on April 21.
“Luke has been flying drones for years and has an obsession with going fast.
“The pair attempted the record by doing speed runs in opposite directions to negate the wind, going full throttle to reach the maximum propellor RPM,” it said.
Meanwhile, the fastest 100m ascent by a quadcopter is 2.7 seconds, and was achieved by Zechen Wei from China in Princeton, New Jersey, in 2019.
Zechen was a student at Princeton International School of Mathematics and Science and attempted the record as part of his two year engineering research project supervised by his mentor, Adam Kemp.
The previous record was held by German engineer Dirk Brunner who achieved the 100m ascent with his custom-made drone in 3.871 seconds.
Daily Voice