It seems inevitable that sooner or later, the performance of autonomous drones will surpass the performance of even the best human pilots. Usually, things in robotics that seem inevitable happen later instead of sooner, but drone technology appears to be the exception to this. We've seen an astonishing amount of progress over the past few years, even to the extent of sophisticated autonomy, making it into the hands of consumers at an affordable price. The cutting edge of drone research right now is putting drones with relatively simple onboard sensing and computing in situations that require fast and highly aggressive maneuvers. In a paper published in Science Robotics, roboticists demonstrate a small, self-contained, fully autonomous drone that can fly through complex environments at speeds of up to 40kph.