Just like Amazon, Germany’s Deutsche Post-DHL is also testing mini-drones as a way to deliver packages across the skies to your doorstep, the group has said.

Online retail giant Amazon sparked a marketing frenzy on Monday in announcing a project to use flying objects more associated with warfare to deliver packages, maintaining it could be up and running within five years.

But Deutsche Post yesterday said it too has a project that predates Amazon’s, though the scheme is in its early stages.

“This is only a beginning,” a Deutsche Post spokeswoman said, with the focus for now on using drones for home delivery of medicine.

Amazon on Sunday posted a video on its Web site showing a prototype. The body of the device is about the size of a flat-screen TV with eight small helicopter rotors lifting it in the air.

“I know this looks like science fiction. It’s not,” Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos told US broadcaster CBS when revealing the project.

US media reported that delivery giant UPS is also researching drone home delivery.

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