Drone soccer is a new, fast-growing, futuristic sport that takes traditional soccer to a whole new level. The game was first introduced to drone enthusiasts in 2016, by a research team from CAMTIC Institute of Technology, based in South Korea’s Jeonju city. The city launched the first match on November 4th using balls developed in partnership with CAMTIC.
The first international tournament of Drone Soccer, “The 2018 Robo Universe Drone Soccer competition,” took place on June 30th, 2018, in Goyang city. Over three-hundred people from twenty-two teams competed for the winning trophy.
Kim Seung-su, the mayor of Jeonju, said:
By the year 2025, we aim to host the drone soccer World Cup series in Jeonju. Maybe in upcoming years, drone soccer teams from all over the world will come to compete.
During the 2019 Amsterdam Drone Week, the innovative drone sport was brought to the spotlight. The organizer of the event, Patrick Coumans, said that drone soccer was introduced to the Netherlands at the event in December, and everybody loved it.
Drone soccer is a mix of drone flying and playing soccer involving two teams of up to five players per team whose mission is to score the highest number of goals. The two groups of drone pilots face off at either end of a cage, representing the soccer field. On each end of the pen are the goals, which are two rings suspended by ropes. Since they are suspended, if a drone bumps into it, it swings out of the way, making it more challenging.
The soccer balls are drones fitted with 360-degree cages, which ensures the drones can crash without any damage. The cages that surround the drones are equipped with different colored LED lights to identify each team’s ball and are made of carbon fiber. Pilots must fly the team’s soccer drone into the goal at the opposite end of the cage. Only one drone is allowed to fly through the ring, leaving the rest of the drones to attack and defend each other.
Coumans said:
It’s a lot of fun. It’s always fun to work as a team, and it’s always fun to get better at the technique as you go along and the people watching love it.
As of May 1st, 2019, Drone Soccer has officially been included in the FAI Sporting Code as a provisional class (F9A). If Drone Soccer came to your town, would you play? What are your thoughts on this futuristic sport?
