Drones equipped with facial recognition has been widely discussed.  We haven’t seen any drones with advanced facial recognition capabilities in the market yet, but it is clear that the technology is ready for launch as companies have patented technologies for drone-based facial recognition.

A patent application, published earlier February,  was filed by Tel Aviv-based AnyVision back in August 2019 in the U.S., detailing tech to help a drone find the best angles for a facial recognition shot, before trying to find a match for the target by referring to faces stored in a database. 

The patent aims to iron out some of the complexities of identifying faces from a flying machine. Various obvious issues arise when trying to recognise someone from a drone: acquiring an angle at which a face can be properly captured and being able to get good-quality visuals whilst moving or hovering. Both are considerably harder than getting a match from static footage.