The automatic collision avoidance is pretty cool and it’s done with 1D cameras. Normal cameras are 2D – they see up/down and left/right. The 1 D cameras are just a row of CCD elements like in a scanner that see just left and right. A computer samples the cameras about 20 times a second and looks for high contrast marks that are moving. As they move faster it can be assumed that they are getting closer and so the plane avoids them by turning away.
It only weighs 30 grams for a 80-centimeter wingspan and can flow inside a building for about 4 minutes. With its two 1-gram cameras, a gyroscope, and a small microcontroller onboard, it can detect walls and automatically avoid collisions. The team is now working on even smaller versions of these flying robots which will be used for search-and-rescue, reconnaissance, and inspection applications.