The company, for instance, might not need as many truck drivers or other costly logistical operations. Drones could also have environmental benefits, by reducing reliance on pollution-belching vehicles. The biggest boon may be to customers, who could be able to receive their orders more quickly, depending where they live.

The fact that Amazon’s latest drone tests were in Britain is no coincidence.

The country’s regulators have been more cooperative than their American counterparts about such flights, even signing an agreement with Amazon in July to allow the testing of drones in rural and suburban areas.

As part of those trials — some of which have taken place at a secretive farm in rural Cambridgeshire — Amazon has been allowed to fly drones without a human pilot at the controls, navigating to destinations solely by GPS. The company says it has developed “sense-and-avoid” technology to help the machines fly around towers, birds and other obstructions.

Not all of the residents in the area have been fans, however.

Julia Napier, who helped found a Cambridgeshire association that maintains public footpaths around one of Amazon’s test sites, said the company’s drones threatened wildlife and the wider countryside, something that the company has denied.

“They are testing those drones here because they can’t do it in America,” she said. “Whatever the Americans don’t want, I don’t want it, either.”

While Amazon has experimented with different drone designs, the one that makes the delivery in the company’s video appears to be a quadcopter — a helicopter with four rotors — that can take off and land vertically.

So far, the devices are limited to carrying cargo weighing less than five pounds. They use cameras to identify landing marker pads that customers place in their backyards or in other unobstructed locations.