A new tech startup has announced plans to hold a flying car race in Australia before the end of 2020, the first of what it hopes will be a series of events that could become the 21st century version of F1. Organized by Airspeeder, a tech startup with offices in Adelaide and London, the race will feature two remotely piloted flying cars, racing through the outskirts of Coober Pedy, a small town in the Australian Outback used as the setting for the original Mad Max films. The first race is planned as a public exhibition, with support from Australia's Civil Aviation Safety Authority, and Airspeeder hopes it will be the first of an international circuit of races that could expand to include piloted vehicles. 'Le Mans, Bathurst, Monaco, there are these amazing places where we've seen the birth of new sports,' Airspeeder's Matt Pearson told ABC News. 'This is such a great place for us to basically create that next iconic place for racing.'

The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI), the world's largest nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of unmanned systems and robotics, has compiled a list of "wow-worthy" examples of the vision that the fifth generation of wireless technology (5G) is inspiring for the use of connected drones. It says that 5G can: bring data-throughput speeds of up to 10 gigabytes per second, enabling real-time sharing of aerial video and other sensor data; enable devices to stay connected while traveling hundreds of miles per hour, allowing for remote deployment of AI-enabled, ultra-responsive autonomous fleets; and it could support up to a million connected devices per square kilometer -- enough capacity to absorb an explosion in the Internet of Things alongside increasingly sophisticated mobile applications, on the ground and aloft. "5G is going to be transformative," says Tom Sawanobori, chief technology officer for CTIA (Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association). He cited a 2017 study by Accenture which estimated 5G would bring 3 million new jobs, $275 billion in new investment and a $500 billion boost to the U.S. gross domestic product. Active tech companies in the markets this week include FLIR Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: FLIR), Plymouth Rock Technologies Inc. (CSE: PRT) (OTCQB: PLRTF), Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ), Raytheon Technologies Corporation (NYSE: RTX), QUALCOMM Incorporated (NASDAQ: QCOM).

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. A sizeable chunk of shoreline was spotted by boaters this week in Michigan's Muskegon Lake that could be the result of record water levels and erosion. The floating piece of vegetation was featured in an aerial drone video that shows a pontoon boat circling it. "I've lived my whole life in the Muskegon area, and I've never seen anything like it," said Joe Gee, the photographer who captured footage of the islet.

Qualcomm is working on AI computing much like rival chip makers Intel and NVIDIA, but it's sticking to what it does best: smaller devices and connectivity. It just unveiled the RB5 AI-enabled 5G robotics platform -- a follow-up to the RB3 chipset -- designed to be used in a wide array of robotic and drone products. The chips could help manufacturers build autonomous devices that can navigate their environments more adroitly while quickly relaying crucial information back to the user. The RB5 platform kit is a set of hardware, software and development tools that will allow manufacturers "to create the next generation of high-compute, low-power robots and drones," the company said. On the hardware side, it uses the company's QRB5165 processor and Kryo 585 CPU and Adreno 650 GPU, based on the Snapdragon 865 CPU. It's been customized for robotics applications and can deliver 15 TOPS (tera operations per second) of AI performance.

The Trump administration plans to reinterpret the deal between 34 nations in order to allow U.S. defence contractors to sell more American-made drones to various nations, three defence industry executives and a U.S. official told Reuters.

Stéphane Fymat, the head of that new business, said Honeywell expects the hardware and software market for urban air taxis, drone cargo delivery, and other drone businesses to reach $120 billion by 2030 and Honeywell's market opportunity would be about 20% of that. He declined to say how much of that market Honeywell was targeting to capture, adding only that the unit has hundreds of employees with many engineers. Honeywell doesn't build drones itself but provides autonomous flight controls systems and aviation electronics. The new business creation comes as the coronavirus pandemic creates a surge of interest in drone deliveries; Fymat said it's accelerating the drone cargo delivery programs of some of its partners. Some of Honeywell's customers include Intel-backed Volocopter, Slovenia-based small aircraft maker Pipistrel, which is developing an electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft for cargo delivery, and UK-based Vertical Aerospace, which has test flown a prototype vehicle last year that can carry 250 kilograms and fly at 80 kilometers an hour.

Students aren't able to visit school libraries during the summer months anyway, but the pandemic has made it especially hard for many families to keep getting free reading material until public libraries reopen. Wing's library book delivery service is available to any of the roughly 600 students in the district who live in the delivery area. They won't have to return the books until school starts up again in the fall, Passek said.

Washington – The Trump administration plans to reinterpret a Cold War-era arms agreement between 34 nations with the goal of allowing U.S. defense contractors to sell more American-made drones to a wide array of nations, three defense industry executives and a U.S. official told Reuters. The policy change, which has not been previously reported, could open up sales of armed U.S. drones to less stable governments such as Jordan and the United Arab Emirates that in the past have been forbidden from buying them under the 33-year-old Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), said the U.S. official, a former U.S. official and one of the executives. It could also undermine longstanding MTCR compliance from countries such as Russia, said the U.S. official, who has direct knowledge of the policy shift. Reinterpreting the MTCR is part of a broader Trump administration effort to sell more weapons overseas. It has overhauled a broad range of arms export regulations and removed the U.S. from international arms treaties including the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Open Skies Treaty.

Schools and libraries have been closed for months, but some kids aren't going to get away with playing video games all summer. Kelly Passek -- a middle school librarian in Montgomery County, Virginia -- is sending out summer reading via drones. After using the quadcopters from Wing to get some home essentials, she realized that she could use the service to literally drop some knowledge on local students. Passek does have to resort to some manual labor to get books to kids, though. She takes requests via a Google Form, then packs up the books and drops them off at Wing's facility.

Google's new drone delivery service Wing will help bring library books to school children in Christiansburg, Virginia to help make up for the city's library closures during the COVID-19 pandemic. The new initiative is being overseen by Kelly Passek, a librarian for Montgomery County Public Schools, who first pitched the idea to Wing. Students in Christiansburg can submit a request for books in the school district's library system and Passek will pull the book from the stacks and send it out in one of Wing's custom delivery containers. Google's Wing drone delivery service will now bring library books to school children in Christiansburg, Virginia'I think kids are going to be just thrilled to learn that they are going to be the first in the world to receive a library book by drone,' Passek told The Washington Post. Passek initially got the idea after wondering about how the 600-plus students in the school district were fairing after the county closed school campuses and libraries.