Behind the Olympics’ noisy new FPV drones: At the 2026 Winter Olympics, a team of 15 high-speed FPV drones deliver first-person footage by chasing athletes at up to 80 mph. Speedify devs explain how Olympic-level drone pilots operate these lightweight custom camera drones, using new technology to fly behind Olympic athletes on downhill skiing, luge, bobsled, skeleton, and ski jump, capturing HD video and transmitting it live to the Olympic broadcast using advanced COFDM encoding.

We look at how the Olympic drones work with 2 cameras, why the drones have to be human-controlled to avoid disasters like the recent Amazon drone crash, how the drone batteries handle the cold, and how the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics venues set up their network for the best wireless connectivity. At the Olympics, there’s no replay buffer, so 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.