Mercedes van will be a mothership for fleets of delivery robots

A van pulls up in a village street and a ramp extends to the pavement from a side door. A swarm of wheeled robots trundle down the ramp and head off down local streets on missions of their own. Their cargo delivered, they head back up the ramp and the van drives off. This is the vision behind a new collaboration between delivery robot start-up Starship Technologies based in Tallinn, Estonia, and German car maker Mercedes-Benz. Amazon is testing flying drones to deliver packages, but the e-commerce giant faces a raft of regulatory hurdles before its bots take off.