Behind the Olympics’ noisy new drones: At the 2026 Winter Olympics, high-speed FPV drones deliver first-person footage by chasing athletes at up to 80 mph. We explain how these lightweight camera drones use new technology to fly behind Olympic athletes on downhill skiing, luge, bobsled, skeleton, and ski jump, capturing HD video and transmitting it live using advanced COFDM encoding.

At the Olympics, there’s no replay buffer: the drones send redundant signals across multiple frequencies to prevent data loss. Though athletes don’t hear the drones thanks to helmets and speed, TV viewers have noticed the noisy drone buzz, worth it for the Olympic POV shots.