SKEYE Pico Drone: Meet the world's smallest drone incapable of hurting anyone [video]

A Dutch company has launched the world's smallest drone, which measures less than an inch across and is designed to perform cool stunts in mid-air without harming anyone.

While governments around the world are scrambling to tighten drone regulations to prevent more civilian incidents as a wave of new consumers are expected to receive unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for Christmas, Netherlands-based TRNDlabs has launched the SKEYE Pico Drone, which looks more like a toy than a nano drone.

The SKEYE Pico Drone, priced at $49 (£32), can be thrown in the air to fly and comes with a 6-axis flight control system that allows it to flip, hover and dive in mid-air. It has three levels of sensitivity to navigate it into super-tight corners, as well as built-in LED lights to help it fly at night.

Since the drone is so small, weighing just 7g and measuring less than an inch across in length, it can be stored within its controller, which looks like you borrowed it from your Xbox.

Is that it?

Well, yeah. The SKEYE Pico Drone is designed to be cute and fun to play with. However, before you dismiss it entirely, it does have a slightly bigger cousin that comes with a HD camera.

The SKEYE Mini Drone with HD Camera, priced at $99, measures 8.8cm x 8.8cm and offers the same features as the mini version, except that it comes with adjustable gyro sensitivity. The camera offers a 2MP (1280 x 720) resolution and the drone comes with a 4GB MicroSD memory card to store your footage.

However, although it weighs 37g, this drone can only fly for 7-8 minutes on a 30-minute charge, the same as its cousin.

The rise of the nano drone

After the SKEYE Pico Drone, the next smallest drone in the world is the OnePlus DR-1, a cute red-and-white limited edition nano drone that was released by Chinese smartphone manufacturer OnePlus in April. The OnePlus DR-1 (priced at $19.99) measures 2.75in across and has a handheld remote, but it does not record footage.

And after that, the next up in nano-drone sizes is the Zano – a tiny quadcopter "selfie drone" (now available for £169.95) controlled by a smartphone app that is designed to let users take selfies and HD videos of themselves from a great height.

Unfortunately, some of the promised features in the Zano are still in development and there are concerns about the device's battery life and GPS, but its manufacturer the Torquing Group says these issues will be fixed in due course.

And finally, the biggest nano drone of them all is Lily, a 26.1cm x 26.1cm drone designed by several graduates from UC Berkeley's robotic lab, which claims to offer HD 1080p video at 60fps or 720p video at 120fps, as well as generating 12mp images, which are stored on a 4GB microSD card.

Lily was originally available for pre-order at the price of $499, but since June, the price has gone up to $799.