Privacy at Home: an Inquiry into Sensors and Robots for the Stay at Home Elderly
It addresses privacy concerns for elderly users of home technology, but is incremental as it applies an existing framework to new dilemmas.
The paper explores privacy challenges for elderly individuals using smart home sensors and robots, analyzing dilemmas such as sensor control and machine learning to enhance awareness and trust.
The elderly in the future will use smart house technology, sensors, and robots to stay at home longer. Privacy at home for these elderly is important. In this exploratory paper, we examine different understandings of privacy and use Palen and Dourish's framework to look at the negotiation of privacy along boundaries between a human at home, the robot, and its sensors. We select three dilemmas: turning sensors on and off, the robot seeing through walls, and machine learning. We discuss these dilemmas and also discuss ways the robot can help make the elderly more aware of privacy issues and to build trust.