Journal article
Person Recognition in Aerial Surveillance: A Decade Survey
IEEE transactions on biometrics, behavior, and identity science, v 8(1), pp 3-19
01 Oct 2025
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
The rapid emergence of airborne platforms and imaging sensors is enabling new forms of aerial surveillance due to their unprecedented advantages in scale, mobility, deployment, and covert observation capabilities. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of 150+ papers over the last 10 years of human-centric aerial surveillance tasks from a computer vision and machine learning perspective. It aims to provide readers with an in-depth systematic review and technical analysis of the current state of aerial surveillance tasks using drones, UAVs, and other airborne platforms. The object of interest is humans, where human subjects are to be detected, identified, and re-identified. More specifically, for each of these tasks, we first identify unique challenges in performing these tasks in an aerial setting compared to the popular ground-based setting and subsequently compile and analyze aerial datasets publicly available for each task. Most importantly, we delve deep into the approaches in the aerial surveillance literature with a focus on investigating how they presently address aerial challenges and techniques for improvement. We conclude the paper by discussing the gaps and open research questions to inform future research avenues.
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Details
- Title
- Person Recognition in Aerial Surveillance: A Decade Survey
- Creators
- K. Nguyen - Queensland University of TechnologyFeng Liu - Drexel UniversityC. Fookes - Queensland University of TechnologyS. Sridharan - Queensland University of TechnologyXiaoming Liu - Michigan State UniversityArun Ross - Michigan State University
- Publication Details
- IEEE transactions on biometrics, behavior, and identity science, v 8(1), pp 3-19
- Publisher
- IEEE
- Number of pages
- 17
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Computer Science
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:001675217800005
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-105017988650
- Other Identifier
- 991022121038004721
UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
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Source: SDGs in the Output
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- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- International collaboration
- Web of Science research areas
- Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence
- Imaging Science & Photographic Technology