Buy egocentric and robotics video data for AI training

What is egocentric and robotics video data?

Egocentric and robotics video data is footage that shows a task from the point of view of the person or robot doing it. Egocentric video comes from head-mounted or chest cameras worn by people. Robotics data adds the robot's own camera feeds, joint positions and control actions, often recorded while a human operator steers the robot by teleoperation.

Ordinary web video rarely shows hands, tools and objects at close range from the actor's viewpoint. Our video training data page covers general footage licensing.

What do AI teams use egocentric and robotics data for?

AI teams use egocentric and robotics data mainly to train robot policies and world models. A world model learns what happens after an action, so footage paired with the action taken is worth more than footage alone.

• Manipulation policies: picking, placing, folding and opening, learned from demonstrations
• Humanoid training: household and factory tasks recorded from a human viewpoint
• Vision-language-action models: linking an instruction, a camera view and a motor command
• Evaluation: held-out tasks in unseen rooms to test whether a policy generalizes

What open egocentric and robot datasets exist?

Several large open egocentric and robot datasets exist, but most were released for research and carry license terms that matter for commercial training.

Commercial collection is now larger. MIT Technology Review reported in April 2026 that Scale AI says it has gathered more than 100,000 hours of footage, that micro1 holds tens of thousands of hours and that Encord is also recruiting recorders. See the profiles for micro1, Scale AI and Encord.

How much does egocentric and robotics data cost?

Egocentric and robotics data has no published price per hour from any buyer or marketplace we checked. The public figures describe what collectors pay recorders and what the market spends in total.

• Recorder pay: $15 an hour for one micro1 contractor in Nigeria, MIT Technology Review, April 2026
• Market spend: more than $100 million a year by robotics companies on real-world data, an estimate by micro1 chief executive Ali Ansari
• General footage for comparison: Adobe paid an average of about $2.62 per minute, Bloomberg reported in April 2024

Treat recorder pay as a floor, not a price. Our guide to AI training data pricing models compares per-hour and flat-fee deals.

Egocentric footage in the US needs consent from the people it records and a written grant from the people who filmed it. Each layer has its own rule.

• Copyright: a contractor owns the footage they shoot unless they sign a written assignment, or a work made for hire agreement in one of the nine categories in 17 USC 101, which include part of an audiovisual work
• Biometrics: Illinois' BIPA lists a scan of face geometry and a voiceprint as biometric identifiers and requires a written release before collection
• State privacy: the CCPA treats biometric information as personal information and precise geolocation as sensitive personal information, and GPS in video metadata can place a recorder's home
• Audio: California Penal Code 632 makes it an offense to record a confidential conversation without the consent of all parties, which can catch household members talking in the background
• Bystanders: micro1 asks recorders not to show faces or personal details, and one recorder told MIT Technology Review he keeps his two-year-old daughter out of frame

MIT Technology Review reported that recorders did not know exactly how their footage would be stored, used or shared. Ask for the contributor agreement and consent wording, and check both cover AI training by third parties.

What makes robotics data more useful?

Robotics data is more useful when every frame lines up with the action taken and the hardware is documented. Ask for camera intrinsics, frame rate, control frequency, the robot model and gripper, and whether failed attempts are included and labeled.

DROID's authors list a Franka Panda arm, three stereo cameras and an Oculus Quest 2 headset for teleoperation, the level of detail a buyer needs to judge transfer to its own robot. Check a representative sample against the data manifest for hours, tasks and scenes.

If you hold UK or EU data

If footage was recorded in the UK or EU, identifiable people in frame are personal data under UK GDPR or EU GDPR, and UK GDPR Article 4 names facial images as biometric data when they are processed to identify someone. The seller needs a lawful basis for sharing, or footage with faces and voices removed.

How do you source vetted egocentric data?

You source vetted egocentric data by setting the tasks, rooms and robot platform you need, then checking each seller's consent records. Every seller we shortlist passes our eight-point vetting standard. Book a free consultation or submit a data requirement.