A small self-driving robot, which can deliver shopping and groceries to the door, will begin trundling through the streets of London in 2016.

The six-wheeled robot has been created by the co-founders of Skype under a new company called Starship. Its creators claim it will able to deliver two bags of shopping, weighing around 9kg, on short trips within half an hour of an order being placed.

Starship CEO Ahti Heinla said the delivery vehicles could operate 99 percent autonomously, with prototypes already undergoing testing. A pilot service should go live in Greenwich, London next year. Other pilot schemes will take place in the US and then the robots may be used in other countries, if they are successful.

Heinla said the company's robots were intended to cut down on delivery costs for customers. "The last few miles often amounts to the majority of the total delivery cost," he said.

When an order is placed the shopping would be collected and placed into a robot at a local hub. Inbuilt GPS systems, cameras, gyroscopes and other pre-installed mapping data would then control the robot on its delivery route -- although a human operator could remotely take control if things went awry.

A mobile app will let shoppers track the progress of the delivery. And when it arrives at its destination only the person with the mobile app will be able to access the goods inside.