Preserving privacy in mobile spatial computing

Mapping and localization are the key components in mobile spatial computing to facilitate interactions between users and the digital model of the physical world. To enable localization, mobile devices keep capturing images of the real-world surroundings and uploading them to a server with spatial maps for localization. This leads to privacy concerns on the potential leakage of sensitive information in both spatial maps and localization images (e.g., when used in confidential industrial settings or our homes). Motivated by the above issues, we present a holistic research agenda in this paper for designing principled approaches to preserve privacy in spatial mapping and localization. We introduce our ongoing research, including learning-assisted noise generation to shield spatial maps, distributed architecture with intelligent aggregation to protect localization images, and end-to-end privacy preservation with fully homomorphic encryption. We also discuss the technical challenges, our preliminary results, and open research problems in those areas.