The APDCAT claims ethical robotics to preserve home privacy at Mobile World Congress

The Catalan Data Protection Authority (APDCAT) has promoted the debate at the Mobile World Congress around the development and design of intelligent robots, which are increasingly present in society, both for healthcare support and for recreational purposes. Thus, it has organized the conference ‘Robots, AI and fundamental rights: another member of the family?’, to focus on the opportunities of technology and also on the need to make a good design and good use of it, in order to preserve the privacy and security of homes, and to prevent the data they may collect from ending up impacting on the fundamental rights of people.

In her speech, the director of the APDCAT, Meritxell Borràs i Solé, defended that the authorities must take a proactive role and establish the limits, in a world in which technology is increasingly integrated into homes.

Borràs warned that this intelligent technology that enters our homes generates risks to our rights and distorts the way we relate to our environment. He recalled that AI is only truly beneficial when it respects fundamental rights and values ​​that place people at the center.

An AI that challenges professionals and citizens

For her part, expert Carme Torras i Genís, mathematician, doctor in computer science and research professor at the Institute of Robotics and Industrial Informatics (CSIC-UPC), spoke about the benefits of AI incorporated into robotic assistants that allow people with physical or cognitive limitations to increase their autonomy, as well as freeing caregivers from routine tasks so that they can dedicate quality time to patients.

She defended that healthcare robotics is a key technology to face the great challenge posed by the aging population, the lack of care personnel and the growing burden that this poses for the healthcare system and families. In this context, he presented some of the prototypes of robots developed to feed, dress, provide cognitive training to patients or help nursing staff with stressful routine tasks.

Torras added that all agents must be involved in the design process, both administrations and health institutions, doctors, therapists, social workers, caregivers and patients.

Finally, he pointed out the need to incorporate ethics, because we are all responsible for how AI develops and affects society. In this sense, he defended that we have a duty to educate ourselves, in order to make well-informed decisions, as professionals, consumers and voters.

The session was moderated by the head of the Legal Advisory Service of the APDCAT, Xavier Urios Aparisi, and brought together nearly 200 people at the Àgora Stage.

Mouthpiece for privacy protection

The APDCAT takes advantage of the international projection of the MWC to spread the culture of privacy and raise awareness about the impacts of the development and use of technology regarding the protection of personal data. In this context, this 2026 has a permanent space in hall 8.1, from where it advises and provides consulting services to organizations that require it, at the InfoPrivacy Point, as well as raising awareness on the subject through recreational activities such as the Privacy Warrior Challenge competition.