It was only earlier this year that delivery service Nuro became the second company to get permission to test fully driverless vehicles in California, and now it can claim another milestone. California's DMV has granted the state's first Autonomous Vehicle Deployment Permit to the company. With the regulatory approval in hand, Nuro can begin operating a commercial autonomous vehicle service in California. Nuro says it will start making deliveries "soon" in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, with an announcement on a partnership with an "established" retail partner to follow. If you hope to see one of its adorable R2 delivery vehicles (pictured above) in action, you'll have to wait; the startup will first begin shuttling goods with its fleet of autonomous Toyota Prius cars before pressing the R2 into action.

Perhaps the clearest sign that self-driving vehicles are coming to a road near you is that the startup boom has settled down. Nearly all the outfits that formed to crack robo-driving problem have paired up with the big automakers that can provide the manufacturing muscle they need to go big: Argo AI with Ford, Cruise with General Motors, Waymo with Fiat Chrysler, Aurora with Volkswagen and Hyundai. The startups that are entering the space at this late date are focused on various niches the new industry has created: improving lidar and radar sensors, compressing mapping data, and so forth. Nuro.ai sits somewhere in between: It isn't trying to dominate this industry, and it's not settling for a role as a component supplier. The Silicon Valley startup did develop its own self-driving system, from scratch, but where its competitors talk about ridesharing, trucking, deliveries, and any other use case they can think of, Nuro is focused. The company, which came out of stealth mode today and just raised $92 million, is going after commercial deliveries, and it has designed a vehicle that--unless things go terribly--no human will ever sit inside.

The first commercial shipment by a self-driving truck was a beer run. Uber Technologies Inc.'s self-driving trucking unit, Otto, said Tuesday it partnered with brewing giant Anheuser-Busch Cos. to carry 51,744 cans of Budweiser on a shipment through Colorado. "Yes, you can go out right now and buy a can of beer that was shipped by a self-driving truck," Otto said. With "full support from the state of Colorado," Otto said, the white-and-red truck traveled from Fort Collins down Interstate 25 to Colorado Springs last Thursday "exit-to-exit without any human intervention." "Our professional driver was out of the driver's seat for the entire 120-mile journey down I-25, monitoring the self-driving system from the sleeper berth in the back," Otto said.

One of the world's largest package delivery companies is stepping up efforts to integrate drones into its system. UPS has partnered with robot-maker CyPhy Works to test the use of drones to make commercial deliveries to remote or difficult-to-access locations. The companies began testing the drones on Thursday, when they launched one from the seaside town of Marblehead. The drone flew on a programmed route for 3 miles over the Atlantic Ocean to deliver an inhaler at Children's Island. The successful landing was greeted by jubilant shouts from CyPhy Works and UPS employees on the island to witness the test. "I thought it was fantastic," said John Dodero, UPS vice president for industrial engineering.

United Parcel Service Inc. UPS -0.42 % said Friday it successfully used a drone to deliver medicine to an island near Boston, jumping into a race with competitors such as Amazon.com Inc. AMZN 0.13 % to test drone delivery inside the U.S. The delivery of an inhaler on Thursday was conducted in partnership with CyPhy Works, a drone maker in which UPS holds a stake. The delivery kicks off a wider test by UPS of using drones for commercial deliveries to remote or difficult-to-access areas. "UPS has a history of trying to take a look at new technologies as they evolve," said Chuck Holland, a vice president of industrial engineering. "We're looking at this in steps," he added, declining to say whether the company may someday use drones more broadly.