Amazon's Prime Air successfully delivered a package by drone last December, while self-driving trucks from a startup named Embark are now bringing packages to customers in southern California.
They are examples of technology that is about to reshape the logistics industry. In the near future, you might receive parcels from a truck with no driver, while the motorcycle delivery man will turn into a flying machine.
"Supply chain professionals need to seize the opportunity that exists today and what we need to look at are drones and autonomous vehicles," says Raymon Krishnan, president of the Singapore-based Logistics and Supply Chain Management Society.
Emerging technologies such as drone delivery, autonomous vehicles, Earth-orbit satellites and the Hyperloop will also allow people to live and work in a wider variety of places, the consulting firm Bain & Company said in its report, "Spatial Economics: The Declining Cost of Distance", released in September.
Advances in logistics technologies and drones will continue to improve last-mile economics and allow businesses to deliver goods faster and at ever-decreasing cost, thus allowing people to live farther out from large population centres, it said.
Hyperloop technology, first announced in 2012 by Elon Musk of Tesla Motors fame, is supposed to whisk goods and commuters through a tube that has been pumped to a near-vacuum at a speed of more than 1,200 kilometres per hour.
Tests are continuing, and transport pods have been developed by JumpStarter's Hyperloop Transport Technologies and Virgin's Hyperloop, but full commercialisation is still a long way off. Its potential is, however, immense from a cost perspective.
Mr Musk has projected that his proposed 610-kilometre route between San Francisco and Los Angeles would cost US$6 billion to build, compared with $68 billion for a high-speed rail link of the same distance. However, Hyperloop One has estimated the cost of its 172km loop in California at $13 billion.
Drone delivery, on the other hand, is available now and is expected to catch on quickly. Bain estimates that drone package delivery now costs 75-80% less than human delivery.
Apart from Amazon, Google's X and DHL have also developed delivery-drone prototypes. While regulatory approvals remain a barrier in the US and Canada, Australia and New Zealand are allowing more liberal use of drones for commercial activity.
The Bain report also indicated that new commercial delivery services using both autonomous vehicles and drones, such as driverless UPS trucks with drones that serve the last mile, could have an even bigger impact on cutting household shipment times and costs. The cost of Amazon Prime Now human delivery could be reduced from $8 for a one-hour delivery per package at present to about $2 by 2020, and eventually to $1.
Packages that can be delivered by drone, of course, are limited to small and lower-margin items. For its maiden flight, a fully automated Prime Air drone using GPS completed a route in Cambridge, England in 13 minutes. According to Amazon, a drone travelling below 400 feet could carry packages up to 5 pounds (2.6kg).
Amazon says it is still on track to achieve its goal of launching a full service by 2018. While it remains unclear just how much distance these drones can cover, CEO Jeff Bezos has said that 86% of packages shipped by Amazon fall under the 5-pound limit.
Amazon also holds a patent for a parachute that delivery drones could use to drop packages to save time and energy and prevent potential collisions between drones and people, pets or objects in a customer's yard.
For bigger deliveries and transporting people, autonomous trucks and buses are needed, and developments in this area are also promising. For example, trucks from Singapore to Jurong Island, an artificial island located to the southwest of the city-state, are now all automated guided vehicles (AGV).
Google was one of the first to be granted a patent for an autonomous vehicle in 2016 but Embark is the first US company to demonstrate the technology end-to-end. It has been delivering Frigidaire refrigerators 1,050km up and down the I-10 freeway, from El Paso, Texas, to Palm Springs, California since early October this year.
Autonomous trucks, as opposed to personal cars, are seen as having high potential since driving on a highway, where trucks spend most of their time, is relatively easier when compared with driving in an urban area with pedestrians, traffic lights and other factors that must be taken into account. An automated big rig just has to stay in its lane and keep a safe distance as opposed to watching out for people walking in front of the car or motorcyclists coming from any side or direction.
The optimum autonomous passenger carrier may be a flying drone. Dubai in September launched a two-seat, 18-rotor craft made by Volocopter of Germany, backed by Daimler. The emirate aims to have self-driving vehicles of all kinds account for a quarter of all journeys made there by 2030.
"I do not think truck drivers will be obsolete and I do not think we will be taking a taxi with no taxi driver in the near future; it is not going to happen overnight," Mr Krishnan said at Symposium 2017 hosted by Thailand's Department of International Trade Promotion. "What I think is going to happen is that there is going to be a larger application of this, but it is going to be selective."