Designing a System Based on Robotic Assistance for Privacy Awareness in Smart Environments

The widespread use of the Internet of Things (IoT) has brought up the issue of privacy in both business and personal settings. IoT devices collect and share data about the environment in which they are integrated and about people involved in activities performed in such an environment. The data can be unintentionally propagated outside of the intended or prescribed context, such as a business meeting. Enabling the safe use of IoT devices comes at the cost of strict privacy regulations and increased complexity. Therefore, smart environments pose new engineering and privacy challenges that require novel tools. In the present paper, we propose a system architecture design based on robotic assistance for raising the awareness of people about privacy policies. As our system is designed with modularity in mind, it gives the flexibility to users to design privacy policies using a controllable and accountable set of rules, it supports heterogeneity in terms of software and hardware choices, and it enables expansion with new functionalities. We implement the proposed system design in a prototype using a semi-humanoid robot in the context of business meetings.