Airspeeder and the tech driving flying car racing

Flying cars are not just a thing of Hollywood films and fantasies. Airspeeder, an Adelaide-based flying car racing project, is led by co-founders Matt Pearson and Jack Withinshaw. 

The racing series was established in 2016  with a mission to bring electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) advanced aviation technology to the masses through a sporting competition. The potential urban aerial mobility market is projected to be worth $US1.5 trillion.

During Dell Tech World, Pearson and Withinshaw highlighted the technological advancements, including AI and edge inferencing, and the importance of racing to drive innovation and public acceptance despite facing regulatory hurdles in air space. 

“There’s no technical barrier anymore. The electric systems and battery technology is available and there’s nothing really stopping us from having flying cars in our cities and we all need to be comfortable with the idea,” Pearson said. 

Airspeeder has multiple partnerships with the likes of Intel, Dell, Acronis, AWS and Telstra Purple, which has been working on delivering the near real-time virtual race control system since 2021. 

Racing is a safe space to innovate and build awareness. Just take for example what is happening in the automotive sector with Formula One, IndyCar and NASCAR, Pearson said with data as the anchor point. 

“They are still innovating, and those innovations are trickling down into daily drivers today, even when we’re living in this EV world and autonomous cars,” he said. 

There are many layers involved to bring the Airspeeder racing project to life across all elements of infrastructure, network, cyber security and augmented reality systems. 

Withinshaw explained that all had to be built and layered on top of each other from across Airspeeder to its engineering business, Alauda. 

“There’s all these different elements that we have to be able to incorporate within the racing series, and the technology that runs through it, both with Intel and Dell, is ubiquitous. From precision workstations, media and PowerEdge servers that are ruggedised in the middle of nowhere,” he said. 

“We have to set these up so they’re able to transmit data, telemetry and broadcast all the way back to our factory in real time. And it’s not just about the vehicle. It’s about all the layers of infrastructure and the partners have to come together to make it happen.”

Withinshaw said AI will act as a core foundation in enabling vehicles to communicate and not touch. 

“We want close combat racing, so we’re going to use collision avoidance as the key,” he said. “They can digitally bump but not physically touch.”

This is what Withinshaw calls an AI force field and remains its greatest challenge.

“It’s the ability for two speeders to not physically touch. There are pre-adjusted rules, saying if Vehicle A comes in at a certain angle, Vehicle B will be forced to go into a certain direction. You can’t do that on the ground, but you can do it in 3D space,” he said. 

“There’s a whole new world for motorsports and for how these vehicles can securely talk to each other.”

“We’re using racing to be able to evolve technology really quickly.”

Dell Technologies revealed a stack of updates to its AI Factory and new infrastructure offerings during its recent Dell Tech World conference.

Julia Talevski travelled to Dell Tech World as a guest of Dell Technologies.