The court ultimately awarded him 500,000 Taiwanese dollars (around Rs 17 lakh or $19,000) for emotional distress. The court agreed with her, sentencing the man to five months in prison and ordering him to pay a 150,000 Taiwanese dollar (around Rs 5 lakh) fine. A robot vacuum unexpectedly became the key piece of evidence in a Taiwanese man’s divorce battle, helping him prove that his wife was having an affair. The man secretly recorded footage from the device’s camera and used it in court to support his claim against his wife and her alleged partner. But the victory came with a major setback. His wife filed a case against him, arguing that he illegally recorded her in a private setting without her consent.
The Taiwanese couple married in 2021 and occasionally stayed at a holiday home. The man’s suspicions began during a 2023 vacation, when he noticed a used toothbrush in the bathroom, according to reports.
The footage showed his wife changing clothes, getting into bed with the same man and moving around the house while undressed, according to the case details. The court found that using the footage as evidence did not make the original recording lawful, according to the case details. About three months later, the husband tried to contact his wife remotely through a robot vacuum’s app. Instead, he saw live footage from the vacuum’s camera. The wife then sued her husband over the way he obtained the evidence. She argued that she had not consented to being recorded and that the robot vacuum’s sensors and indicator lights were not enough to tell her that its camera was filming her. The man’s actions were found to have violated his wife’s privacy.
He later checked parking garage CCTV footage and saw another man who had previously driven his wife home.