Online retailer Amazon hopes to have mini drones delivering packages to customers in just 30 minutes, its chief executive has claimed.
During a TV appearance in the United States, Jeff Bezos played a video showing the tiny robotic devices, known as octocopters, which pick up items in small yellow buckets and whiz them through the air.
"I know this looks like science fiction. It's not," Mr Bezos told CBS television's 60 Minutes show.
"We can do half-hour delivery ... and we can carry objects, we think, up to five pounds (2.3kg), which covers 86% of the items that we deliver."
The mini drones are powered by electric motors and it is hoped they could cover areas within a 10-mile radius of distribution centres, allowing Amazon to cover a significant portion of the population in urban areas in the US.
The concept requires additional safety testing and federal approval but Mr Bezos estimated that Prime Air, as the service would be called, could be up and running within five years.
Mr Bezos wants Amazon to be at the cutting edge of the retail industry The mini drones operate autonomously and drop items at target locations thanks to GPS coordinates transmitted to them.
Amazon said the octocopters would be "ready to enter commercial operations as soon as the necessary regulations are in place", noting that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was actively working on rules for unmanned aerial vehicles.
But the ambitious project may never get off the ground.
Strict air regulations mean drones can currently only be operated by line-of-sight control, defeating the remote delivery concept.
The FAA's NextGen air traffic system for planes has also been delayed due to complex technical problems.
Amazon's promotional video shows a package being picked up at a warehouse, travelling across an open field and landing in a customer's rear garden.
However, blustery weather, power lines and trees could all hamper deliveries.
In high-density cities such as New York, where many people live in high-rise apartments, tall buildings provide physical barriers that cannot be overcome.
The US military-operated GPS location system also has in-built inaccuracies for civilian use, increasing the risk of delivery problems.
Mr Bezos hinted that part of the motivation behind the mini drones was to make sure Amazon remains on the cutting edge of the retail industry.
"Companies have short life spans ... and Amazon will be disrupted one day," he said. "I would love for it to be after I'm dead."
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