Global Regulatory and Ethical Frameworks for Visual Data Privacy in Service and Consumer Robotics: A Comparative Review

The increasing adoption of service and consumer robots with sophisticated vision capabilities has also triggered serious concerns about the visual data privacy.The robots employ high-definition image capture, facial recognition, biometric data, environmental mapping, and contextual information to enable efficient task execution and improve human-robot interaction.Although the data enhances the robots' functionality, it also poses risks to users, including over-surveillance, unintended revelation of sensitive information, data profiling, and ambiguous ownership of the collected data.This paper presents a comparative analysis of the global regulatory frameworks that regulate the use of visual data in robotics in various regions, including the European Union, the United States, China, Japan, South Korea, and India.It also emphasizes the need for the development of ethical robotics guidelines and standards to ensure responsible use of robotics technology while protecting privacy and preventing potential misuse.