Amazon has formed a team focused on driverless vehicle technology, according to The Wall Street Journal.
In its report, The WSJ says that the group is made up of about 12 employees and was created over a year ago. However, Amazon reportedly isn’t aiming to use the team to create driverless vehicles, but instead having it serve as a “think tank” of sorts to determine how to best use them.
Specifically, it’s said that the e-commerce giant is looking at using drones, trucks an forklifts to move goods. In theory, this would help last-mile delivery and make for easier package drop-offs. Many companies have been looking into driverless vehicles, such as Google’s Waymo, Tesla and BMW.
This is part of Amazon’s larger exploration of autonomous package delivery, such as patenting parachute technology in February or airborne fulfillment centres at the end of 2016.
Some companies have already been successful in this regard, such as UPS, which managed to have an autonomous drone deliver a package to a Florida home back in February.
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons
Source: The Wall Street Journal
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