Flying race car makes successful test drive

Creator claims racer combines best of formula one cars and helicopters

ADELAIDE, Australia (KYMA, KECY) - A full-sized pilotless "flying race car" has flown for the first time. Now its creator is preparing to take the sport to a whole new elevation.

Alauda's MK3 Airspeeder is a multicopter craft based on a Formula 1 race car. The developers claim it has greater thrust than an F-15 fighter jet.

Matt Pearson, the found of Alauda, says MK3 will compete in three remotely piloted races to be held later this year. Pilots will race on augmented reality sky tracks.

"We always pictured this as motorsport in the sky, so you're going to have multiple vehicles in the air at the same time. That has been done with air races in the past but with a multicopter you have another level of control," said Matt Pearson, Alauda's founder. "You can't do this with a racing plane. What this means is we can get vehicles within meters of each other and create this kind of virtual force field. It's incredibly intensive on the computing side, the on-board computing, the connectivity, the latency between the communication links between the vehicles. All of that is being pushed to its limits. But ultimately we see this as an important system that can really change how automated air traffic control can be done in the wild in industry later on."

Alauda is just one of several companies developing electronic aircraft. European aircraft-maker Airbus has plans for three different types.