The goal of FIRA Air – Autonomous Race competition is encouraging research teams to design an agile and autonomous navigation system for the drones which can compete against human pilots in a 3D race track. Right now, a manually controlled drone with a skilled pilot is capable of agile maneuvers. As a result, a considerable gap between the performance of an autonomous navigation system and a human pilot exists. To reduce this gap and help the participant teams develop an agile navigation system, we planned the Autonomous Race competition.

As the first year of FIRA Air – Autonomous Race, in 2018, We designed a relatively simple track with a guiding line on the ground to help the autonomous navigation. Also, an autonomous coefficient would be implemented in the score calculation (benefits autonomous drones). These advantages will be reduced each year until autonomous navigation systems reach a human level performance.