Researchers at the Chiba University are developing quadcopters that are capable of flying in formation using image processing and motion capture, each one of these mini quadcopters weighs in at 300g and they are capable of carrying a total of 500g, which includes a 250 battery pack.
The researchers are using four quadcopters together at the moment, but have plans to use more at once, which would enable then to gather information faster.
“The cameras capture the markers, and send all the images to the host computer, which calculates the position and attitude. Positioning can be done to within 1 mm. The control frequency is 100 Hz, so position and attitude are calculated every 10 ms, to prevent collisions.”
You can find out more details about these quadcopters which use motion capture for flying over at DigInfo.