Microvolunteering and the Future Part I

If you are a microvolunteer who regularly helps nonprofts with tasks and brainstorming on Sparked or contributes to the many micro-projects on HelpFromHome, you may think you are being futuristic enough. In this three part series, through observations of current technology trends and a whole lot of imagination, Microvolunteering Wednesday is going to make you feel like your crowdsourced, network managed, and bite sized internet tasks are nothing more than the grunts and club swings of a cave man.

As a note, please explore the provided links (many are videos), they are proof that the ideas stated here are not so crazy as they sound!

Robots and an Internet Connection

As I pointed out in a previous Microvolunteering Wednesday article, we have seen that volunteers clicking buttons within their browser can help accomplish meaningful results. However, what if you could go beyond this example of manipulating cat toys to entertain shelter cats, and do some real heavy lifting?

What if robots could help a construction crew take down a dangerous crumbling building to make a nieghborhood a safer place? What if a robot could sort donations at a food bank with a robotic arm on wheels? What if it could teach a child to juggle? While you may think that robots are too far off from reaching this level of ability, you might be right; one of the main problems with using robots to get work done is that they are not intelligent. One incredibly advanced robot takes over two hours to identify and fold a towel. However, ask yourself this: how long would you take to fold a towel using video game controls hooked up to robotic arms? Well, recently observing people operate an old mechanical arm in a museum (designed to handle radioactive materials), most were able to stack blocks in a pyramid within 5 minutes of playing with the controls. This means that you might just be the missing link between a robot that can help and one that just sits there.

Other than simple buttons in a browser, in the near future, you might also be able to use kinnect-like powered controls to manipulate robots in an even more natural way. If you are interested in these types of ideas, check out AprioriControl, a company looking to make internet controlled interactive experiences more common.

Check back in two weeks for part II as we look at more ways Microvolunteering might radically evolve in the future. Please post in our crowdsourcing forums if you have other predictions for the future of the microvolunteer and the potential new face of volunteering in an increasingly technological world.