32 - Privacy Considerations for Socially Assistive Robots

Summary

The integration of assisted living technologies in the home is rapidly accelerating. As socially assistive robots (SARs) often operate in the private sphere of life, sometimes in symbiotic relations with the people they assist, they may give rise to privacy concerns. This chapter investigates the potential privacy and data protection issues arising from the increasing deployment of assisted living technologies (AAL) in general and SARs in particular. It addresses privacy concerns related to human–robot interactions, including conversational interfaces, audio- and video-based assistive technologies, and analyzes them within the European context. Since the wide range of privacy concerns resulting from using SARs raises particular challenges for the design process, this article zooms in on the Privacy by Design concept introduced in the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Since communication and interaction with robots in therapeutic and care contexts impact data protection, these privacy concerns pose challenges that must be considered in a life cycle starting during the robot design and finalizing the implementation in care settings, including home care.