A driverless bus trial in Japan is using facial recognition cameras to allow people to pay for their journeys.

Japan Today reports the services in the cities of Maebashi and Mita use a “face pass”  system in which passengers have their face scanned and registered beforehand so that their account gets charged automatically once their face is detected boarding a bus.

This suggests that driverless bus services could become completely operator-free rather than still needing a conductor to check for payment compliance.

Facial recognition ticketing is already used in Japan on the Osaka metro.

(Picture – from promotional video of Osaka system)