Social Robots in Care and Data Privacy - A European Perspective

Social Robots increasingly become a challenge for data privacy regulations within care facilities, as they are not prepared for robots that can scan their surroundings and possibly share this data in real-time. The needs of stakeholders to these emerging challenges must be analyzed to apply existing data privacy rules. We collected data from stakeholders through interviews (n=66), surveys (n=271) and workshops (n=39). The data was analyzed towards opinions of data privacy concerning robots in care facilities. Our findings have then been contrasted to existing data privacy regulations (GDPR) in Europe and show how the needs of the stakeholders towards such systems can be harmonized with the existing rules and what additional regulation is needed. This study enables a better understanding of the expectations and challenges towards social robots regarding data privacy.