Drone racing has only been a human sport for a few years, but artificial intelligence is already gunning to take over. Today, the Drone Racing League (DRL), which is one of the foremost organizations trying to turn drone racing into the next NASCAR, announced a new competition for teams to develop AI pilots for its aircraft. With backing from aerospace firm Lockheed Martin, DRL wants to recruit developers from around the world, including students and drone enthusiasts. They'll have to create an AI that's capable of flying one of DRL's standardized quadcopters through its complex race courses without preprogramming or human supervision. Teams will then compete in the DRL's upcoming 2019 season by racing against one another in the same courses as human pilots as part of the newly designated Artificial Intelligence Robotic Racing (AIRR) circuit.

The Drone Racing League (DRL) will host a series of races and competitions where autonomous drones will try to beat a professional drone pilot. Teams of university students and other drone enthusiasts will be invited to compete for more than $2 million. The Artificial Intelligence Robotic Racing (AIRR) Circuit will produce four AI vs. AI races in its inaugural season and will use the same video game-inspired courses as the kinds used by pro drone pilots in the DRL Allianz World Championship, DRL CEO Nicholas Horbaczewski told VentureBeat in an email. Both the AIRR Circuit and the AlphaPilot Innovation Challenge, which pits human versus machine, will take place during the 2019 season. The first drone from an autonomous team to beat a human will receive $250,000, and the winning team of the AIRR Circuit will receive $1 million.

Drones could soon be flown by autonomous AI pilots if Lockheed Martin has any say. The aerospace giant is partnering with the Drone Racing League to pit humans and AI against one another to see which can navigate a drone through a high-flying course the fastest. Called the AlphaPilot Innovation Challenge, teams must craft AI system based around Nvidia's Jetson deep learning technology and fly the drone without any pre-programming or human intervention. Lockheed Martin is partnering with ESPN's Drone Racing League to pit humans and AI against one another to see which can navigate a drone through a high-flying course the fastest The first team that can outrun a human DRL pilot wins a $250,000 reward, while the grand prize winner can claim up to $1 million. The winning AI system could spell the future of autonomous drone operations, according to Lockheed Martin.

"The drone racing league is a sport. We do an annual season. We have a clear rule system and scoring system," Nick Horbaczewski, founder and CEO of the Drone Racing League (DRL), enthuses in a small business suite located on the second floor of the Circus Circus Casino in Las Vegas. With a deal with ESPN in the bag, his league is poised to bring the sport mainstream, and within moments of our introduction, he's let me know he's serious. Horbaczewski has delivered this pitch before; his whole business depends on it.

Last year, I asked a simple question: Can drone racing become as big as eSports? While we wait to find out, one of the leading race organizers -- the Drone Racing League -- is making all the right moves this year to make that answer yes. One of the keys to achieving that, the DRL hopes, is the introduction of the Racer3 drone, which will be the standard craft all pilots in the DRL race with. Unsurprisingly, it's more powerful and agile than its predecessor (the Racer2, obviously) and could be the shot in the arm the sport needs to go mainstream. The Racer3 should make races -- which air on ESPN starting June 20th -- even more thrilling, luring more fans (and, by association, lucre) to the game.

They have been responsible for innumerable deaths in the Middle East during the last decade and, if Amazon has its way, will deliver millions of toasters, gift sets and novels in the future. But recently drones have begun to fulfil a less utilitarian kind of role: competition in the nascent world of futuristic motorsports. A confluence of technological advances has made drone racing possible. A minuscule camera, mounted on the drone's nose, allows the pilot, as competitors are luxuriously titled, to control the vehicle through virtual reality-style goggles, as if perched in its tiny cockpit. With powerful lithium batteries, the size of which dictates the speed class of the drone, these machines, which are typically the size of a box of tissues, can reach speeds in excess of 120mph.