A small (usually basketball sized or smaller) robot whose purpose is to record or transmit an A/V feed. Usually hovers, but other variations exist.
They sometimes overlap with Spy Bots but are more closely related to harmless Attack Drones, likewise, sometimes they are magical instead of technological in nature.
As Sinister Surveillance, many these bots are iconic ways to identify the setting as a dystopia of Big Brother Is Watching.
See also Literal Surveillance Bug, Patrolling Mook, and Surveillance as the Plot Demands. Contrast with Animal Eye Spy. Might be deployed by the, well, Drone Deployer.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- Several Doraemon gadgets serves this function, used as far back as the first volume in the story where Suneo made his debut; after Suneo humiliates Nobita in school Doraemon then helps Nobita get back at Suneo by sneaking a probe-like gadget into Suneo's house... and the duo found out Suneo was secretly a bedwetter.
- Dragon Ball:
- The Android Saga of Dragon Ball Z reveals that Red Ribbon Army scientist Dr. Gero has insect-sized robots monitoring the heroes for years, studying their techniques so his Androids would know exactly how to beat them. Another, possibly separate, robot was collecting DNA samples so he could create Cell.
- Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F': After Frieza's revival, Sorbet mentions that the Frieza Force had been using drones to observe Goku, witnessing his fight against Cell and him defeating Majin Buu.
- In Ergo Proxy, Vincent and Pino have escaped Romdeau and are now living in somewhat of a shantytown, with about 15 people in its precinct. Vincent almost has a run-in with one, and after he and Pino settle in, more are sent out. Raul, the newly appointed Director-General of the Citizen Security Bureau is to blame for this.
- In Hunter × Hunter, Musse's Nen ability, Secret Window, functions like this. It takes the form of three small owl-like psychic constructs that follow a target and allows Musse to see and hear everything that the owls can see. One of them requires physical contact with the target but cannot be seen or interacted with by anyone but Musse, though the other two owls' traits are unknown. Secret Window continues to function even after Musse's death too, which has a purpose, as his boss, Benjamin, inherits the owls and can see and hear through them.
- Jujutsu Kaisen: Reggie Star creates several drones to pursue and track Megumi after he flees from their battle, but this leads him right into Megumi's trap.
- Kaiju No. 8: The Defense Force uses them in their operations against kaiju to safely observe the kaiju and the engagement zone for the Mission Control.
- Lycoris Recoil: A recurring element in the setting, with both Kurumi and Robota having a large supply of what are essentially quadrotors with cameras attached serving as eyes in the sky, with DA also employing one in Episode 10 as well.
- Lyrical Nanoha has the Wide Area Search spell, which has Raising Heart releasing inconspicuous floating energy orbs that remotely scan areas.
- Negima! Magister Negi Magi: Asakura's artifact, the Oculus Corvinus/Raven's Eyes. Six small, flying robots used for spying and information-gathering. Perfect for the School Newspaper Newshound. One chapter came up with a more complicated use for them, involving using a ghost to transmit information from one camera to another, so other people can watch the action without being detected.
Comic Books
- Astro City: In the story "Father's Day", Jack-In-The-Box has one in the fight with the Brass Monkey. This is because he's the third Jack-In-The-Box, taking over for his predecessor whose wife is having a child. The camera lets Jack-2 monitor from his basement headquarters and give Jack-3 advice and tactical updates.
- Copperhead: Boo has one he uses to collect all available evidence by digitally mapping crime scenes.
- The DCU:
- This is one of the functions of Mister Terrific's T-Spheres.
- Robin: The villain "Jaeger" uses surveillance drones to track his targets and film his kills. He sells the ensuing snuff films on the black market.
- Judge Dredd: There are a lot of surveillance drones hovering around Mega City One so that the Judges can spy on the people.
- The Rigellian Recorders from the Marvel Universe. In Hulk: The End, a Rigellion Recorder leaves behind a floating orb shaped one to watch over Bruce/Hulk as the Last of His Kind on a post-nuclear holocaust Earth.
Fan Works
- Dungeon Keeper Ami: Metallia's troops get such a spell to connect with her crystal ball, so she can evaluate their combat performance, not that they're told that's what it does.
- Laserllama: Agent Automatons act as mobile spies, the Artificer who created them being able to see the perspective of the construct when it is activated.
Films — Animation
- In Doraemon: Nobita's Dinosaur, the Dinosaur Hunters has drones resembling hovering mechanical eyes that they deployed throughout different time zones, one in the present which spotted Nobita and his pet dinosaur Pisuke which sparked the Hunters' interest in obtaining Pisuke for themselves. And it turns out the Time Patrol has their own surveillance drones as well, spotting the Dinosaur Hunters' hidden base which allows the Time Patrol to serve as The Cavalry at the end.
- In Felix the Cat: The Movie, the Duke uses floating cubes with spotlights shining out of them as a sort of observation device to support his army of mechanized cylinders.
- The Incredibles 1: Syndrome uses these on his remote volcanic island hideout.
Films — Live-Action
- 2000 Meters to Andriivka: Both Ukrainians and Russians make use of small, commercial quadcopter drones to constantly surveil the battlefield. This contribute to high casualties, as both forces can have an accurate location of the enemy and call accurate artillery and drone strikes.
- In Back to the Future Part II, after a ruckus outdoors, hovering robots owned by USA Today swoop down and begin taking pictures for tomorrow's paper.
- Big Trouble in Little China has one of these spying for the Evil Sorcerer Lo Pan.
- In The Dark Crystal, the Skeksis use the "Crystal Bats", which are organic carriers of spy crystals that send images of whatever they observe back to the Castle's Crystal.
- Kill Command 2016. The protagonists are annoyed by the drones that keep hovering in their faces during the training exercise, assuming they've been sent by the corporation to monitor them. At first they just shoo them away, but after realising they're being stalked by rogue Killer Robots they start shooting at them to little effect.
- The Marvel Cinematic Universe iteration of Sam Wilson (a.k.a. the Falcon) swaps the falcon named Redwing from the comics in favor of a flying military drone with the same name, first seen in Captain America: Civil War. Among this Redwing's many functions is a camera that can see through solid objects in order to detect enemies, and sends visual data and other info into Falcon's goggles.
- Mr. Nobody has the Golden Snitch-looking camera drones filming the protagonist for a TV channel's live feed. He responds by Flipping the Bird at them before cloaking his transparent futuristic wall.
- The Running Man (2025). The Network uses camera drones to livestream footage of the Hunters closing in on and killing a Runner. At one point they're shown to have more lethal capacities as well.
- In Sneakers, a non-mobile version was used to hack into a building security system.
- Star Wars has Hovercam
droids and a few probe droids.
- They Live! has little flying saucer drones that are invisible to regular people.
Literature
- Blood Entwined: Tehariel wave monitors, which monitor for both illegal physical activity and illegal use of spirit powers.
- One of these (called a "Public Eye") appears near the beginning of Friday (1982). It's used by police to detect crimes in progress.
- In Heart of Steel, Shark Reef Isle has a number of these patrolling the island lair of super-villain Alistair Mechanus, variously resembling insects or floating balls.
- The Known Space short story "Cloak of Anarchy" has the Copseye, which is used to monitor Free Parks. It also has a stunner to knock out those breaking the Parks' sole rule: don't hurt others.
- Laszlo Hadron and the Wargod's Tomb: Mat joins in on part of the novel's events in the form of one of thse, since his physical form is neither mobile nor portable.
- The Merchant Princes Series: In Empire Games, the United States of Timeline-2 sends drones to investigate other worlds. Sometimes they come back, sometimes they don't. They're very concerned when one timeline, which seems to have a kind-of-20th-century level of technology, reacts in a way which suggests they know what it is.
- In The Mothballed Spaceship by Harry Harrison, the protagonists are trying to get on board a mothballed space battleship that blasts anything that gets too close. They try sending in tiny robots, making them smaller and smaller in an attempt to get past its detectors.
Obsessed by miniaturization, they constructed a flying-eye apparatus no larger than the head of a pin that dragged a threadlike control wire after it that also supplied current for the infinitesimal ion drive. This sparked and sizzled its way to within fifteen kilometers of the Indestructible before the all-seeing sensors detected it and neatly blasted it out of existence with a single shot.
- The Murderbot Diaries. Murderbot can never have too many of these, using them for surveillance in places where there aren't any cameras to hack.
- One appears in the 2005 Nick Velvet story "The Theft of the Empty Paint Can". At the time, drone technology was so new that the editor felt compelled to explain that this was a real item.
- Paranoia Retardant: Saturday and Sunday have dozens of them follow Jesse on her walks to and from work.
- Uglies: Aya has one of these named Moggle that she treats like a pet.
- The War Against the Chtorr: Various types are used by humanity's armed forces against the invading alien ecosystem.
And the ferrets. Too many to count, but the information buzz reports 128 of them, some of them just uncrated, and warmed up today. Slender and dark and flexible, able to slide between a shadow and the wall it falls upon. They’ll slither into the gloom and disappear, gliding from pose to silent pose, sniffing the air, listening, searching, eyeballing everything, scavenging the detritus of the depths, reporting back to distant intelligence engines, where all the random, seemingly unconnected bits of data get compiled, cross-correlated, sifted, sorted, analyzed and annotated, eventually producing a real-time, 3-D map of hell.
- The optic probe device used by the Martians in The War of the Worlds (1898) roughly fills this trope.
Live-Action TV
- In Alpha House, the Watt Brothers only come to meetings on a video receiver and camera mounted on a drone.
- Season 2 of American Gods (2017) introduces the Greek giant turned God of Sinister Surveillance, Argus. He uses bird-shaped drones (presumably as either a nod to or a mockery of Wednesday's own) among many of his other tools of trade to spy on people. One of them is destroyed by a raven right as it picks up Shadow's whereabouts.
- Human journalists in Babylon 5 regularly use hovering cameras.
- Batman (1966) features a variant on this trope: a remotely controlled model plane that tracks radio signals to their origin, which would have seemed a very high-tech concept in 1966.
- The Book of Boba Fett: Fennec Shand has a small, repulsor-driven, spherical recon droid stored in the buttstock of her rifle. It slips in and out of Bib Fortuna's palace unnoticed, mapping the entire place, and giving her and Boba a comprehensive layout and guard headcount.
- Class of '09: The AI in 2034 frequently deploys them to gather intelligence against American citizens and better "protect" them against crime. Many however despise them as the tools of a repressive and out of control surveillance state.
- Doctor Who:
- "Four to Doomsday" features a device known as the Monopticon, patrolling the corridors of Monarch's massive spaceship.
- One of these turns up in "Silence in the Library" as a link to Cal.
- Seven Star Fighting God Guyferd has the Command Satellites that Crown uses to spy on Guyferd and keep tabs on their Mutians.
- in Silverpoint, Greenfront employ one to chase Meg, Elliot, Alice and Finn while they try and rescue their friends. Elliot and Finn end up being decoys to distract it so Meg and Alice can reach the Artefact.
- The Twilight Zone (1985): The episode "To See the Invisible Man" has floating security drones used to watch for people breaking laws.
Video Games
- ANNO: Mutationem: The Fission Mailed scenario has Castor bringing out modified surveillance drones to have them enter Hinterland and search for The Dypheus' Breath, then has them open a portal to carry the artifact out once located.
- Baldur's Gate II has a magical one in the form of the Wizard's Eye Spell. It can go anywhere the player can and is invisible, though not invulnerable. Anything that can see through invisibility can kill it.
- Alien surveillance probes are a recurring threat in C-12: Final Resistance, and can raise alarms the moment it catches you on camera. It gets really, really annoying at one section of the first level, where you must deactivate a forcefield, bypass an area with three probes, and reach the other side unnoticed — if one of the probes spots you, it raises an alarm and the forcefield reactivates, forcing you to repeat the entire process all over again.
- Command & Conquer:
- The USA has this option in two flavors in Command & Conquer: Generals. One is bound to a vehicle and increases sight range while detecting invisible enemies, the other is a General power that makes one circle over a certain area indefinitely, like an infinite Spy Satellite power. The latter is cloaked, the former isn't, and both can be shot down by anything that can target air units (the vehicle-bound kind also dies out if the parent vehicle is destroyed.
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3: The Imperial Burst Drone is a small dragonfly-shaped robot that can detect disguised units, latch onto vehicles to slow them down, or commit suicide to stun vehicles.
- As you get closer to Cortex's castle in Crash Bandicoot (1996), these start to appear.
- Dead by Daylight: The Skull Merchant can deploy up to six stationary drones on the map that emit rotating scan lines. If a moving survivor passes through one, they will be detected and trackable on the Skull Merchant's radar briefly. Upon being scanned a third time, they will gain a claw trap that injures them and makes them trackable for a longer period.
- Deus Ex has an augmentation that allows you to deploy one of these to scout (and it can let off an EMP pulse to sabotage electronic devices). It's considered by most players to be excessively expensive for its utility.
- Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project has a variation that explodes in close proximity to Duke.
- In Fairune 2, a certain collection entry unlocked on game completion reveals the Blue Temple seagulls as being a type of automated surveillance drone.
- Fallout:
- Fallout 3 has Eyebot robots that have a defence laser but are usually friendly to the player character. A RobCo exhibit in Fallout: New Vegas confirms that they can "recognize your face and voice with advanced facial and auditory recognition technology". Some Eyebots in Fallout 3 can call in reinforcements after a certain stage in the game and a random encounter shows two wastelanders discussing whether or not one is spying on them whilst it hovers in between the pair.
- In New Vegas, your companion Arcade Gannon (who is actually a refugee from the now defunct Enclave and would probably know better) expresses a distrust of your Robot Buddy ED-E, who is a Super Prototype for a model of Eyebot that was never produced, specifically because it may be surveilling him.
- Ghost Recon has made extensive use of these.
- In Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, the player can use a Sikorsky Cypher UAV to scan hostile areas.
- Ghost Recon: Future Soldier introduces a smaller drone which the player can deploy to investigate areas without as much fear of detection, including marking enemies as long as the drone has line of sight on them. It also has a few alternate functions, primarily the ability to emit an EMP when required.
- Ghost Recon Wildlands brings the drone back, this time able to permanently mark any enemy the player looks at long enough instead of having to have line of sight, and comes with more alternate functions: along with the returning EMP, it can also heal teammates, emit noise to distract enemies, or outright explode to instantly take out small groups of enemies or vehicles.
- Ghost Recon Breakpoint brings back the drone from Wildlands but reduces its functions to simply surveillance duty; in return, though, it has noticeably greater range and battery power than either of the previous two games.
- Half-Life 2: City Scanners hover right in your face and take a snapshot of you, which creates a blinding flash. Destroying them may net you a battery, which charges up your suit a little bit. The Synth version, the Shield Scanner, gives your position away to Striders with each photo and can sometimes appear with Hopper mines in tow.
- Halo: The UNSC has a variety of small autonomous surveillance drones. The beginning of Halo 2 even shows camera drones present at a military award ceremony. The Covenant also have their own version, known as "Eyes".
- In Heroes of the Storm, the Scouting Drone talent and its variants are used to reveal an area for several seconds, exposing stealthed enemies in its radius.
- Scan-Balls in Hidden Deep are softball-sized hover drones the scout class characters have as standard equipment. They're intended to recon potentially dangerous terrain ahead of you, so you don't have to explore in person and potentially lose a man. They also have a magnet to grab and carry items and can push switches, and push comes to shove, an elecric zapper to fry any hostile lifeforms, but at the cost of eating through its already preciously short battery life.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass: The Phantom Eyes. If they spot Link, they'll summon Phantoms to his location while sticking themselves onto Link to try and slow him down.
- The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has the Sentrobes, which are flying security cameras with a short-range projectile launcher and the ability to launch self-propelled bombs with a timed fuse.
- Metal Gear:
- The CYPHER drones in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty are cameras with a hover fan. They'll sound the alarm if you're spotted by one, and some of them are equipped to shoot at you as well.
- Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain features the predecessor UA drones, which can be found patrolling sufficiently beefed-up FOBs. Specialized versions of these drones can fire smoke or sleeping gas grenades, or drain an intruding player's battery power.
- PAYDAY 2: The Murky Station level has drones that act as flying security cameras.
- Project Eden has two kinds of deployable drone, a hovering ball with a limited battery life and a tracked rover with a small energy weapon. Both can press buttons.
- [PROTOTYPE]: Drones are able to detect Alex and deploy a reaction squad.
- Rage (2011) has Authority Drones, which are designed to scout ahead and look for Ark survivors. Their usefulness is debatable, as despite having several in the players face over the course of the game the Authority never seem to collect a picture of you.
- Rebel Inc. has UAV deployment as support from the Coalition, that act as Defog of War. They are particularly useful to locate Insurgent training camps, so that an Airstrike can wipe them out.
- The Sonic the Hedgehog series has Gun Beetles. While most of them have some type of weapon, the Mono Beetles do not, and thus function as this.
- StarCraft: Observers are permanently cloaked flying robots that can detect other cloaked units.
- Super Mario Bros.: The hover-cam is operated by the cloud-riding Lakitus, controlling said camera with a fishing pole, odd but close enough.
- Ogre Magi in Warcraft II and Warlocks in World of Warcraft have access to a spell, the Eye of Kilrogg, that is essentially a magical version of a surveillance drone (which takes the shape of a big green, disembodied floating eye).
- Grineer data vaults in Warframe are guarded by sensor regulators, balloon drones that will trip the alarm the moment an intruder gets into their cone of view, conveniently depicted as four lines jutting out from its camera. Don't think about trying to destroy them, as they will also trip the alarm if they survive the damage, unless you've already gathered the data.
- Worms W.M.D features the Mischievous Drone, which can scout inside buildings and collect crates for you. An upgraded version that also creates a magnetic field can be crafted.
- X:
- In X: Beyond the Frontier, the Xperimental Shuttle is equipped with a camera drone that is basically an excuse for the devs to have a free-flying external view.
- X3: Reunion features the tiny Camera Drone (about twice the size of a space suit) which is used in several missions but is otherwise unavailable for use. The Motion Analysis Relay System script package in X3: Terran Conflict and Albion Prelude in allows the fighter drone to coordinate as "Goblins", which can function as a surveillance net, by towing surveillance satellites around the controlling ship, or remotely deploy satellites far away for exploration or target spotting for the missile frigates
- X: Rebirth has the Beholder ROV, a tiny drone that can be deployed from the Albion Skunk. It's used to scan ships and stations for potential deals, but most players use them for exploring the detailed stations.
Webcomics
- Batman: Wayne Family Adventures: The drone that the team lost was for surveillance; Stephanie mentions that she was in a high-speed pursuit of the second target while Gary was using the drone to follow the first.
- The Tic-Tocs (robot birds) from Gunnerkrigg Court, apparently, though who exactly they're working for is a mystery to the Court and the Forest both. It's eventually revealed that they were built by Kat, as part of a Stable Time Loop to save Annie from her fall off the bridge in one of the earliest chapters.
- A Miracle of Science has robot cameras on dynamic balancing platforms.
- Tower of God: After meeting again during the Hell Train arc, Yuri sets a stylized drone to keep tabs on Endorsi when she slips away to avoid the Training from Hell.
Western Animation
- Detentionaire has eyebots for a school, of all things.
- Invincible: During the third season, Mark discovers a drone observing his family from afar. It is revealed to have been sent by Angstrom Levy, who survived his supposed death at the end of Season 2.
- My Adventures with Superman: In "Fullmetal Scientist", the Newskid Legion creates the 'Flying Newsroom', a toy helicopter intended for remote reporting. For some fortunate reason, Flip decided to attach a glitter gun to it.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) features such "spy orbs" utilized by Robotnik to monitor his city.
- The Autobots' Sky Spy from Transformers: Generation 1 is a long-range satellite version of this.
Real Life
- The main functional difference of the real-life examples compared to fictional ones is that real-life drones tend to be much louder (and so, they usually fly much higher than in fiction to remain undetectable by casual observation).
- Micro Air Vehicles are being designed for the army.
- The Russian invasion of Ukraine since February 2022 has seen the use of reconnaissance drones increase considerably alongside those used offensively.
- Russians use the Orlan series.
- Ukrainians pressed back the Soviet Tupolev 141 Strizh in service. Some are fitted with explosives for offensive purposes.
- The Bayraktar TB2, which was quite effective as an attack drone in the early days of the Russian invasion, is now mainly used for recon purposes, due to consolidated Russian air defenses.
- Ukrainians also use the Danish drone RQ-35 Heidrun. A major provider of funds for them is United24 under the patronage of Mark Hamill ("These are the drones you're looking for").
- FPV drones (of various designs) are both Surveillance and Attack Drones in one, in that they have both the high-definition surveillance cameras, the range, and the packet of high explosives. They cover the battlefield, find targets, and immediately zoom in at high speeds for a kamikaze attack.
- There was, for a time, a plan to develop softball-sized robots of this type for use on the International Space Station. They would be capable of moving about on their own by using ducted fans to produce thrust. Since the ISS is in a microgravity environment, they would effectively be capable of flying around the station in adherence to the spirit of the trope. Likely served as the inspiration for the SGU Kinos mentioned above.
- The Air Hogs Hawk-eye is the civilian version, you can even post your findings online.
- The AR Drone from Parrot has the same capabilities and carries both nose and belly cameras.
- It spawned an entire family of small helicopter drones (factory- or enthusiast-built) driven by an iPhone or Android device.
