Idiobionics: The Unification of Privacy and Intelligent Robotic Prostheses

The human body is at the center of a growing family of technologies designed to tightly and persistently couple biological and digital systems. Robotic prostheses are a representative example of this tight coupling. Also referred to as bionic limbs, robotic prostheses are devices that support people who have lost limbs in pursuing daily life activities such as walking and grasping objects. Bionic limbs are now perceptive and responsive owing to their integration with advanced sensors and artificial intelligence-based control approaches. Consequently, such robotic prostheses can now be viewed as semiautonomous wearable robotic systems that can co-adapt with their users. However, the same sensing and control advancements that increase the capability of robotic prostheses also introduce threat vectors that could be exploited by malicious entities to violate the privacy of users. To fully realize the benefits of next-generation bionic limbs, we maintain it is important to directly understand and address these privacy risks and the barriers they might present to user adoption. This paper therefore introduces a new line of inquiry we term idiobionics to holistically investigate issues at the intersection of privacy and intelligent bionic limbs. As the main contribution of this paper, we define idiobionics, ground it in related literature, and provide preliminary evidence showing and discussing potential adversarial attacks that could exploit intelligent bionic limb designs. We then contribute a curated list of open research questions within idiobionics that are relevant to researchers in wearable robotics and other human-facing autonomous systems. We expect that idiobionics research will help unlock the full potential of robotic prostheses and related bionic devices.