Amazon has set up a secretive think tank dedicated to advancing driverless technology. The e-commerce firm won't build its own delivery vehicles but will invest in existing robotics, it is rumoured. The rumours come after the company recently patented a roadway control system for driverless vehicles. Amazon has set up a secretive think tank dedicated to advancing driverless technology. Amazon now has 45,000 robots shuffling products around 20 distributions centres.

Amazon Fresh grocery delivery trucks parked at a warehouse in June 2013 in Inglewood, California. Amid a flurry of announcements around the development of automated driving technology, online retail behemoth Amazon quietly joined the fray by being granted a patent for communications between autonomous vehicles and roadway management systems. Specifically, U.S. Patent 9,547,986 deals with sharing lane direction and guidance information with self-driving vehicles on roads that have reversible lanes. While the system would seem to deal mainly with on-highway automated vehicles, the proposed system is applicable to "any type of vehicle, including but not limited to cars, trucks, vans, buses, street cars, helicopters, trains, subways, aircrafts, boats, etc., regardless of how powered or driven." The patent contains no information about what Amazon's plans may be, but given that the company already operates a dedicated fleet of semi-trucks hauling goods to and from its distribution centers as well as panel delivery trucks, a move into autonomous driving seems inevitable.

The race is on to develop self-driving cars that are able to navigate busy roads safely. Now, Amazon has been awarded a patent for a road network that controls how autonomous vehicles could one day navigate a busy motorway. The patent hints at Amazon's ambitions to control fleets of vehicles and roads as well as its dream of'reversible lanes' to help ease congestion. Reversible lanes could essentially change the direction of a flow of traffic, with the traffic management system communicating with cars to allow them to travel safely in the direction they want without slowing other vehicles down. The patent, awarded by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in Alexandria, Virginia, reads: 'A roadway management system can generate lane configurations for a roadway or a portion of the roadway.