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Audi and Airbus show off mini-me flying car

Pop.Up Next prototype
Audi, Airbus and Italdesign are showing off a quarter-scale prototype of their “Pop.Up Next” drone-car hybrid at the Amsterdam Drone Week conference. (Audi AG Photo)

A flying car developed by Airbus, Audi and Italdesign took a high-profile test flight today at the Amsterdam Drone Week conference, but its size was low-profile.

The modular vehicle was a quarter-scale demonstration model of the “Pop.Up Next” transportation system that the three companies are developing.

The idea is to have a passenger compartment that can sit on top of a four-wheeled electric vehicle to travel the roads, or attach to the bottom of a quadcopter to fly through the air. At the Amsterdam show, the three companies displayed impressive full-scale mockups of the flying car, but the gizmo that actually flew was basically a drone with brackets attached.

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Audi and Nvidia team up on autonomous car

Audi Q7
In a self-driving car demo, CES attendees can ride in the back seat of an Audi Q7 piloted driving concept car that has no one behind the wheel. (Nvidia Photo)

Nvidia may be best-known for video games, but its deal with Audi to provide the smarts for an autonomous vehicle in 2020 demonstrates that it’s not just playing games in the artificial intelligence realm.

The expanded Audi partnership, announced this week at CES in Las Vegas, is just one of several hookups that the California-based chip company has forged with automakers.

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