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 trucks that roam the highways of the Australian outback are a lot bigger than the average 18-wheeler. Instead of towing one container, these road trains, as Australians refer to them, pull at least three self-tracking semitrailers behind them, which follow each other like train carriages. The trailers are packed with heavy goods--cattle, gas, coal, cars--and sent roaring through the continent's interior to deliver supplies to coastal cities. Fully loaded, road trains weigh up to 120 tons, and materialize on the shimmering horizon of outback roads as great mechanical beasts. As they pass at 70 miles per hour, you can feel the air velocity generated by the machine trying to suck you under the rig. Road trains are as much a part of the outback as red dirt or Akubra hats, signifiers of a rugged, Mad Max mythology that has come to define Australia's interior in the global imagination.

SwagBot is the world's first robot cowboy, built to roam the rugged Australian terrain. While it will be doing some cowboy work, make no mistake: SwagBot is less like John Wayne and maybe a little more like a hyper-competent herding dog. It can corral cows and pull trailers, doing the type of work seen in the early parts of Brokeback Mountain. It can go through swamps, up hills, and over rocks. It's not the first robot to hit the farms of the Australian outback, which are vast, remote and often difficult to access.