“First-Ever Manned eVTOL Receives Racing Certification”

Air­speed­er has achieved what some thought would be mighty dif­fi­cult. The com­pa­ny has received the first ever reg­u­la­to­ry approval for human test­ing of its elec­tric fly­ing race car, reports a press release. The next step may be even more chal­leng­ing. The approval of actu­al com­pet­i­tive races. 

The Aus­tralian Civ­il Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Author­i­ty (CASA) has giv­en the nod for Alau­da Aero­nau­tics to take its Air­speed­er MK 4 race-craft from con­cept and test­ing to a ful­ly con­struct­ed and flight-ready vehi­cle. 

The release explains, “Engi­neered with exper­tise drawn from Fer­rari, McLaren, Air­bus and Boe­ing, the MK 4 is the first of its kind in Aus­tralia and the world. More than cer­ti­fi­ca­tion alone, this mile­stone demon­strates that fly­ing car rac­ing is no longer sci­ence-fic­tion, but a tan­gi­ble real­i­ty, fus­ing aero­space inno­va­tion with the excite­ment of sport to define the future of advanced mobil­i­ty.”  

It con­tin­ues, “This marks anoth­er bold leap for­ward for Aus­tralian aero­space. Fol­low­ing land­mark approvals such as Gilmour’s orbital launch, CASA is cement­ing Australia’s posi­tion as the prov­ing ground for fron­tier tech­nolo­gies, stretch­ing from rock­ets to fly­ing cars.”

Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion often val­i­dates years of engi­neer­ing, test­ing and in this case, rac­ing. The approval marks the cre­ation of a new cat­e­go­ry: “Phys­i­cal AI Rac­ing.”

The path to obtain­ing these major cre­den­tials has been thor­ough. To date, the Air­speed­er team has con­struct­ed more than ten air­craft from the ground up, and has trained sev­en pilots through their train­ing pro­gram.

Cur­rent­ly work­ing on the fourth gen­er­a­tion vehi­cle, the team has suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed over 400 test flights with the MK 3, includ­ing tri-vehi­cle races on aer­i­al cir­cuits where mul­ti­ple speed­ers com­pet­ed for vic­to­ry using Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty race­tracks.

Com­bin­ing advanced tech­nolo­gies with a rac­ing for­mat that motor­sport fans will recog­nise, Air­speed­er finds itself in a realm that seems per­fect­ly suit­ed for the next major inno­va­tion. The AI Force­field fea­ture: A dis­tinc­tive shared-con­trol sys­tem that guar­an­tees real-time safe­ty among high-speed vehi­cles, cre­ates an exhil­a­rat­ing mid-air rac­ing expe­ri­ence while also serv­ing as the ulti­mate AI test­bed for the unique data sets pro­duced by high-octane sports. It process­es data from fast 3D flights, close rac­ing, mul­ti-sen­sor inputs, quick deci­sion-mak­ing, human inter­ac­tion and extreme con­di­tions.

Eng­lish-born Matt Pear­son, Airspeeder’s co-Founder, enthused, “This is the For­mu­la 1 of robot­ics, where safe­ty, auton­o­my and cut­ting-edge AI meet real-world speed. We’ve cre­at­ed a sport that solves real engi­neer­ing chal­lenges and accel­er­ates the future of mobil­i­ty through rac­ing.”

Air­speed­er inte­grates cut­ting-edge AI, sim-to-real robot­ics, and low-laten­cy con­trol sys­tems to cre­ate com­pet­i­tive 3D rac­ing envi­ron­ments, where safe­ty and pre­ci­sion are para­mount. Airspeeder’s evo­lu­tion into a plat­form where motor­sport, aero­space and AI con­verge has also attract­ed foun­da­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy sup­port from Dell Tech­nolo­gies, Intel, AWS, Tel­stra and IWC Schaffhausen.

John Roese, Airpseeder’s CRO and lead­ing AI Offi­cer, added, “Each Air­speed­er race­craft is essen­tial­ly a fly­ing AI PC, cap­tur­ing, pro­cess­ing and act­ing on mas­sive streams of data in real time.” Adding, “This isn’t just the future of sport, it is a prov­ing ground for the next era of intel­li­gent, autonomous mobil­i­ty.”

The release con­tin­ues, “Dell Tech­nolo­gies pro­vides the inno­v­a­tive blend of com­po­nents that opti­mise the tech­nol­o­gy sys­tems of the craft. Dell Pro Max high-per­for­mance AI PCs with Intel Core proces­sors and NVIDIA RTX GPUs are used for rapid iter­a­tions in the design of the Air­speed­er.”

It con­tin­ues, “On race day, Dell Pow­erEdge XR servers thrive in extreme con­di­tions, with­stand­ing the heat, dust and shock faced by the vehi­cles. This abil­i­ty sets the stage for the future of rac­ing to take place in nev­er before seen set­tings: arid deserts, snowy ter­rains, and high-alti­tude tracks over the ocean. The machines cap­ture ter­abytes of real-time data at the edge using AI from vehi­cle per­for­mance and pilot behav­iour to audi­ence broad­cast feeds.” 

Matt Pear­son, is one of Australia’s lead­ing tech vision­ar­ies, co-found­ing and tak­ing Fleet Space, along­side co-founder Flavia Tata Nar­di­ni, from an idea to glob­al leader in space tech and AI-pow­ered min­er­al explo­ration. 

Clos­ing their AUS150 mil­lion Series D fund­ing round at an AUS800 mil­lion val­u­a­tion, he has cre­at­ed future indus­tries out of rad­i­cal fron­tier tech­nol­o­gy appli­ca­tions in space explo­ration, aero­space and cli­mate tech­nol­o­gy.

Mean­while, Intel is the Offi­cial Intel­li­gence Part­ner. It plays a key role in devel­op­ing vehi­cle intel­li­gence and race infra­struc­ture for the series, pow­ered by Intel Core and Intel Xeon Scal­able proces­sors, offer­ing full sys­tem sup­port and insights to ele­vate the rac­ing expe­ri­ence for pilots, teams and spec­ta­tors. Exten­sive 5G con­nec­tiv­i­ty guar­an­tees crit­i­cal data pro­cess­ing with­out inter­rup­tion through­out the race, allow­ing for top-tier per­for­mance and con­trol. 

Matt Pear­son

Intel will also assist with defin­ing the vir­tu­al race­track, a cru­cial ele­ment for one of the most inno­v­a­tive aspects of the sport, where real-life rac­ers expe­ri­ence the lim­it­less pos­si­bil­i­ties of aug­ment­ed real­i­ty.

Hans Chuang, VP of Sales & Mar­ket­ing and Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of Intel Asia Pacif­ic and Japan, remarked, “We have been work­ing with Air­speed­er for three years as its Tech­nol­o­gy Intel­li­gence Part­ner. We are excit­ed to be pow­er­ing the next trans­for­ma­tion in trans­porta­tion, as demon­strat­ed by Intel sil­i­con pow­er­ing the first manned fly­ing rac­ing speed­er.” 

Airspeeder’s cur­rent race­craft, the Alau­da Air­speed­er Mk3, already flies in com­pet­i­tive set­tings and is pilot­ed by for­mer For­mu­la 1 and For­mu­la E dri­ver Bruno Sen­na. 

Jack With­in­shaw, anoth­er Founder and CCO at Air­speed­er, said, “Rac­ing is where inno­va­tion hap­pens at the edge. We’re build­ing a sport that brings togeth­er the best engi­neers, brands, and minds to shape the future of mobil­i­ty. That’s the mag­ic of Air­speed­er.”

Mean­while Celeros, Airspeeder’s offi­cial eSports plat­form, has gained major trac­tion. It has just announced a part­ner­ship with the Alpine F1 Team, which boasts celebri­ty sup­port from Hol­ly­wood star Ryan Reynolds and for­mer Top Gear host Jere­my Clark­son, aim­ing to deliv­er an immer­sive rac­ing expe­ri­ence to fans world­wide.

The release con­cludes, “Offi­cial­ly intro­duced to the pub­lic in 2019 at the UK Good­wood Fes­ti­val of Speed, Air­speed­er has grown from a bold con­cept into a ful­ly oper­a­tional race series and deep-tech plat­form. With next-gen vehi­cles on the hori­zon and glob­al momen­tum build­ing, 2025 marks the start of a  break­through era for the future of fly­ing car rac­ing and aer­i­al mobil­i­ty.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://airspeeder.com

(Images: Air­speed­er)

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