Although finding a face is very rare, innumerable portraits are concealed among the enormous quantity of grains of sand existing on earth. A fully automatic robotic search engine scrutinising grains of sand in situ: a dosing funnel in the machine sprinkles the sand across a slowly rotating glass disc; the microscope above the disc enlarges the grains of sand; face detection is applied to each single sand particle; when a face is detected the portrait will be recorded and stored; finally the sand that has traversed round the circuit is swiped away, making space for new grains.