The race to build the fastest drone will go to a 18 year old kid, and this model is now commercially available for pre-order!

Meet George Matus, Jr., a former teenage world champion drone pilot, Thiel Fellow and CEO of Teal Drone. At age 18, while many will be thinking of girls and campus life here, George with his start up company rolled out its first product, which happens to be the world’s fastest production drone, capable of flying 136 kmph. But only one kid has built a drone at age 14, won a fellowship from a tech investor at age 17, and a year later launched a record-breaking product under his own company.“Teal,” as Matus put it, “is the realisation of a dream.”

Powered by NVIDIA Jetson TX1, Teal is an airborne supercomputing platform. The drone, which will be available soon, will ship fully assembled with the onboard flight control Follow-Me feature, which allows the drone to autonomously follow a person. Plus it comes with a partially charged battery so pilots can immediately unbox Teal and start having fun.

The drone is built with a wide-angle camera that can capture 4K video and 13-megapixel stills that will appeal to beginners, hardcore racers and hobbyists.

Priced at US$1300 (RM5330) Teal comes with its own software platform, Teal OS, and an SDK for new class of flying apps that can use machine learning, autonomous flight and image recognition. The SDK gives full access to Jetson TX1’s visual computing power, as well as onboard USB expansion ports.

Key specs include:

• Onboard camera: 13MP wide field of view & 4K video
• 16 GB internal storage
• microSD card slot
• Onboard GPS/GLONASS navigation with Differential and RTK GPS (a first for production drones)
• Flight range: 300 ft (using mobile device) / 2,500 ft (via Wi-Fi extender)
• Capable of flight in 40+ mph winds
• Water resistant
• Ships with two fast-charge batteries
• Optional Endurance Package doubles flight time

Measuring just 261mm on the diagonal, a fully assembled Teal is small enough to fit in a standard backpack.