One of the most exciting things about writing How To was that, for a few chapters, I was able to reach out to some extremely cool people who were will

Serena Versus the Drones

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2021-05-30 13:00:02

One of the most exciting things about writing How To was that, for a few chapters, I was able to reach out to some extremely cool people who were willing to apply their unique expertise to ridiculous tasks. Among those who generously agreed to help was Serena Williams.

Here’s a portion of the chapter “How to Catch a Drone”, in which Serena helped test whether tennis serves could be an effective countermeasure against flying robots … by taking a drone out onto a court and hitting tennis balls at it until it crashed.

A wedding-photography drone is buzzing around above you. You don’t know what it’s doing there and you want it to stop.

Let’s suppose you have a garage full of sports equipment— baseballs, tennis rackets, lawn darts, you name it. Which sport’s projectiles would work best for hitting a drone? And who would make the best anti-drone guard? A baseball pitcher? A basketball player? A tennis player? A golfer? Someone else?

One sport I couldn’t find good data on was tennis. I found some studies of tennis pro accuracy, but they involved hitting targets marked on the court, rather than in the air.

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