Amazon's flying delivery drones aren't the only robots that could deliver packages of the future. Google has patented a self-driving delivery truck, and now a Latvian company started by the co-founders of Skype is testing a tiny autonomous wagon that looks like a cross between a Red Flyer wagon and Eva from the movie Wall-E.

The start-up is called Starship, an unlikely name for a delivery robot that will spend all of its time on the ground (though the company is taking suggestions for a new name). It's currently being tested all over the globe, from the streets of London to the University of Arkansas. Starship's VP of Engineering Lauri Vain showed it off at Nvidia's GPU Technology Conference this week, steering around conference-goers on the show floor using a PlayStation-like demo controller.

Its smooth white plastic conceals a surprisingly spacious interior, which can fit small- or medium-sized packages. The idea is that consumers will pay a small fee, between $1 and $3, to have near-instantaneous delivery of their items, currently within a 3-mile range.

Although Vain used a remote control to steer the Starship through the crowded conference hall, the production units will be able to automatically detect and avoid pedestrians using an array of nine cameras that feed information to an onboard AI processor. Humans will monitor each Starship remotely, and can take control if something goes wrong.

Of course, the main thing that could go wrong is theft. Starship says the units' cargo bays are locked while they're on a delivery run, and the location is tracked at all times. It would still be hard to trust an extremely valuable shipment to one, though.

Starship has already attracted the interest of major retailers. It's received $1 million in funding from Walmart CEO Doug McMillion, and is currently testing deliveries in 15 cities, mostly in the United Kingdom. The company hopes to expand trials in the U.S., and ultimately wants to start retail deliveries by the end of next year, Vain said.