ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 30 -- United States Patent no. 12,372,975, issued on July 29, was assigned to Snap Inc. (Santa Monica, Calif.).
"Unlocking an autonomous drone for takeoff" was invented by Mathias Andreas Hintermann (Playa Vista, Calif.), Justin Huang (Los Angeles) and Russell Douglas Patton (Playa Vista, Calif.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Systems, computer readable medium and methods for unlocking an autonomous drone are disclosed. Example methods include receiving an indication of a selection of a fly instruction, capturing an image using an image capturing device of the autonomous drone, processing the image to determine whether a face is present in the image, and if the face is pr...