FIRA Air — Drone Racing and Autonomous Flight

FIRA Air is FIRA's aerial branch and one of its fastest-growing sections. The arena extends into the third dimension, and one problem appears that no ground robot has: falling.

Main sections

Air Race: clearing gates and rings in the shortest time.
Autonomous flight: the drone must recognise and fly the course with no pilot.
Combined missions: target identification, light payload delivery, precision landing on a marker.

The exact sections vary by edition and are announced in each year's call.

Why autonomous flight is harder than ground motion

Errors are unforgiving: a ground robot that errs stops. A drone that errs falls and breaks.
Six degrees of freedom: forward/back, left/right, up/down and three rotations — all simultaneous, all unstable.
Localisation without GPS: indoors GPS fails, so you need cameras, optical flow or ground markers.
Brutal weight limits: every extra gram costs flight time. You cannot simply "add one more sensor".
Air effects: downwash reflecting off walls and floors changes indoor behaviour.

Safety is non-negotiable: propellers at speed are dangerous. Practice requires prop guards, an enclosed space and coach supervision. No serious team trains without a safety protocol.

A realistic learning path

Flight simulator: the first dozens of hours belong in simulation, not on a real drone. Crashing costs nothing there.
Manual piloting: stable manual control is the prerequisite for any autonomy.
Programmed flight: executing a predefined route.
Vision and decisions: detecting gates, markers and targets with a camera.
Full autonomous mission.

Skills built

Automatic control (PID and beyond), real-time machine vision, GPS-free localisation and energy management — the same set demanded by the drone industry, aerial surveying and industrial inspection.

For an introduction, start with drones and flying robots for teenagers.

Frequently asked questions

What age can start?

Generally teenage upward, since it needs both control skill and serious safety discipline. Simulator practice can start younger.

Do we need an expensive drone?

No. Start with a simulator, then a small training drone with prop guards; a race drone is a later step.

What does autonomous flight mean?

The drone recognises the course and completes the mission using its own cameras and sensors, with no human commands.

Want to compete in the drone league?

Novin Zehn competition teams train from zero to the world stage — in Tehran and live online.