Telstra, Airspeeder take 5G to the skies with new partnership

The companies have teamed to bring 5G communications to electric flying car racing in Adelaide.

The Alauda Aeronautics Mk3 EXA race-craft, designed in Adelaide, will take part in a race series organised by fellow Adelaide company Airspeeder. , Picture: Supplied

In an initiative that sounds like something out of the Jetsons, Telstra Purple and Airspeeder have announced a partnership to bring 5G communications to electric flying car racing.

Flying cars are a reality in Adelaide, where Matt Pearson, also a co-founder of nano-satellite company Fleet Space, is on a mission to create the world’s first racing series for a manned flying electric car.

Mr Pearson is the founder of Alauda, a manufacturing business set up to build the EVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) vehicles, as well as Airspeeder, the racing series.

The company’s first unmanned test flights took place near Adelaide in June, featuring the AlaudaMk3 – which looks like a futuristic super-sized drone.

These “cars” are not vehicles you would drive down the highway and then head skyward. They are remotely piloted large drones flying through the sky.

Matt Pearson – Airspeeder.

On Wednesday Alauda and Telstra announced a new communications partnership to be offered through Telstra Purple, Telstra’s technology services business. Telstra Purple will provide vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to infrastructure communications.

Alauda was recently featured in The Australian’s 100 Innovators List as one of the nation’s top innovative companies.

“Telstra Purple will deliver the near real-time virtual race-control system required for the high-speed, close format, multi-vehicle circuit racing in the Airspeeder EXA series,” Telstra said in a statement.

“The state-of-the-art system feeds essential technical information to ground crews during test flights and races, reflecting the same approach leading aviation companies use to augment and monitor the systems essential for aircraft safety.

“Whether pilots are on-board or flying remotely, they’ll be able to safely race in close proximity with near real-time data and connectivity powering proximity sensors that deliver haptic vibration alerts.”

Head of Telstra Purple Christopher Smith says the racing series will leverage Telstra Purple’s expertise, technical capabilities and strategic collaboration agreement with Amazon Web Services, along with Telstra 5G.

“Key components of Airspeeder’s race control system include private network communications, data visualisation, edge compute power and bespoke app development.”

Matt Pearson, founder of Airspeeder and Alauda Aeronautics, said the new technical partnership would bring key benefits to racing and the future development of an advanced air-mobility future.

“In delivering on our vision to create the world’s first racing series for electric flying cars we have been drawn to South Australia for some of the very best technical minds from motorsport, aviation and performance automotive.“