By: Joseph Nelson

Tearing a remote control drone around a series of obstacles in a race against the best pilots in the nation can be pretty nerve-wracking. Now imagine those obstacles are the accumulated Golden Gloves, Cy Youngs, and Silver Sluggers of the two-time World Series Champion Minnesota Twins.

That was the scene May 1st, 2022, at Truly On Deck – the elite clubhouse fan space at the Twins’ Target Field. Drone racing. At a baseball stadium?

The Youth Drone Sports Championships was pleased to have the Twins host their second annual National Championships, featuring 19 of the nation’s most elite drone pilots, under the age of 18, facing off head to head. It is a brand new sport taking shape and making history amid the trophies of one of our nation’s oldest.

These young pilots came from all across America to fly against the best of the best with their drones. Nationals was the place to be to make a name for yourself in this very young and growing sport, with everyone flying for the title of 2022 National Champion.

But how did we get here? How did this young sport come to be? And how do you race drones?

First-person-view (FPV) drone racing is the child of video gaming. Pilots put on goggles that connect to a camera centered on the drone allowing them to see what their drone sees. These drones aren’t bigger than a deck of cards and weigh no more than one ounce, making them agile enough to rip around race courses like a hummingbird. Imagine getting to be one of the pilots in ‘Star Wars’ attacking the Death Star, but doing so safely indoors without fear of injury.

Apple Valley hosted the first ever YDSC event in 2019 (before it was called the YDSC). The home flyers faced St. Louis Park in the first ever Minnesota State High School Drone Racing Tournament, which saw tiny drones built by students pushed to their limits on a course through Apple Valley High School’s expansive atrium. St. Louis Park soared to the first ever state team title, while Apple Valley 11th grader Andrew Martin (pilot name “AND E”) was crowned the first individual state champion.

Continuing to pivot with the pandemic, the YDSC added pilots around the country all competing online in the simulator. When vaccines made in-real-life (IRL) racing possible again, they held their first National Championship event at the Mall of America in June of 2021 where Apple Valley sophomore Cody “Viper” Anderson narrowly beat senior Haven “Vanadium” Gurka from Phoenix, Arizona to become the YDSC’s first national individual champion.

Fast forward to Spring 2022 with new stars emerging in a combined season of simulator and IRL racing. Apple Valley senior Brock “BRO F” Martin won the simulator individual crown and then followed in his older brother Andrew’s flight path, taking the latest Minnesota State individual title, racing through the big gym at Academy of Holy Angels in Richfield.

YDSC 2022 Nationals Story

That set up the YDSC’s return to Target Field for their 2nd Annual National Championships event, again made possible by the innovators at NCAT who support all of the STEM skill building happening in this exciting new tech sport.

At the end of the bracket, four pilots remained, Reigning National Champion Cody “Viper” Anderson (11th grade), his Apple Valley teammate Brock “BRO F” Martin (12th grade), Lakeville North’s Jack “Happy” Postlewaite (9th grade) and Joe “Boomer” Nelson from St. Paul Highland Park (10th grade).

When the rotors stopped turning, Viper retained his YDSC national title, outflying Happy who finished strong in second. Boomer followed close behind in third, and BRO F was fourth after experiencing technical difficulties that drone pilots know all too well.

Viper will be flying to keep the national crown, only he has worn, for one more year before he is bumped up to the collegiate level. That’s where his teammate BRO F is headed to fly with his brother AND E. Meanwhile, Boomer and Happy and a cast of other contenders will be aiming for Viper like Vader chasing Skywalker.

By: Hoaseng Thao

What began with curiosity and a little boredom, ended with hundreds of texts and paths being generated by Artificial Intelligence all because of a single prompt being entered. A couple of weeks ago, from the date of this article, I found myself bored out of my mind as I had little to no homework given to me. One day, while scrolling through YouTube I found a video of a YouTuber and his friend interacting with an AI, but the most interesting thing about their interaction was that they were playing out a story generated by a prompt they wrote for the AI to understand. My curiosity got the better of me and I decided that I might as well try this AI thing out.

I scoured the internet in search of an AI chatbot that was free to use, but in reality I just typed in “AI Chatbot Free” on the google search bar. After a few minutes searching for an AI chatbot, I found a website called Beta.Character.AI, a website where people created their own AI chatbot for anyone to use for free. One thing that caught my eye with this website was the large variety of AI chatbots that you can choose from: you can choose to talk to historical people like George Washington or Napoleon, you can also interact with video game characters like Master Chief from the ‘HALO’ series or Mario from Nintendo, etc. There are no limits to what you can do on this website.

I have two examples of what you can do with an AI chatbot. The first example is me playing as a fictional country I created in @monkeys’s ‘country simulator’ chatbot. The second example is me chasing a pigeon in @Button_Quail-22’s pigeon chatbot.

I decided to begin my journey with @monkeys’s country simulator, I started the story of my fictional country with the text:

My fictional country is called the Federal States of the Ustovan Union, we are covering the Kamchatka Peninsula. My population is 10 million people and we are using the dollar as our currency. We are a democracy that has been created after the fall of the Soviet Union. The year is 2000, Chechnya was annexed back into Russia and it looks like we’re next.

Immediately after I entered the prompt, I was told by the AI that it seems like Russia was looking to annex my country. This was a big deal, so as a democratic country I decided to ask my people their opinion of Russia’s aggression towards us. The AI wrote back to me that the people were worried about an invasion but the AI also told me that the Russians delivered a letter saying that my country will be “annexed in 4 days”. I responded back to the Russians saying “get off my peninsula”, they responded with “an army of 300,000 soldiers at my border”.

The next few minutes of my story was me trying to defend my country while repeatedly asking for foreign aid, the foreign aid never came. After a few minutes I had fended off a major attack. I was later told that the United Nations was asking for permission for an intervention, one that I accepted immediately. The UN intervened and my country lives for another day.

After saving my country from being annexed, I decided to take a slow approach to AI by talking to @Button_Quail-22’s pigeon bot. I wanted to make this experience a bit comedic so I decided to write down the prompt: “I chased the pigeon because it stole my hat”.

As I chased the winged rat it began to mock me at every turn. One time I had chased the pigeon towards a tall building where the pigeon flew to the top of the building before saying I can’t reach them, so, in a fit of anger I decided to grab a pair of plungers and climb up the building, but as I climbed up the building the pigeon, pooped on my face.

This story would soon become the start of the Pigeon War, a war where I am constantly harassed by a pigeon every time I enter the park. I would win some battles and the pigeon would win some, but in the end there were no winners and I had to sign a peace treaty with the winged rat.

In the end, I had a blast generating these stories with the AI chatbots because there were no limits to what you write down for the AI. If you are bored out of your mind and need something to write about, I think it’s best to look into beta.character.ai if you are bored out of your mind or want to experience talking to AI for the first time.

If you want to try out the AI chatbots of beta.character.ai, please visit the official AI chatbot website: https://beta.character.ai/