Many months ago I was researching robotics and after many hours of watching stanford university lectures I started to draw up loads of diagrams of skeleton stick man who I could use to show my theory of ball bearing robots. This theory works off the Six degrees of freedom (6DoF) which are backwards, forwards, up, down, left, right, pitch, yaw and roll.

Six Degrees of Freedom Picture Credit Wikipedia

If you interlink a robot with ball bearings you will end up with many degrees of freedom because each ball bearing point will contain the Six Degrees of Freedom, this will allow the robot to become very flexible. When we bend our fingers we only have a certain amount of freedom where as a robot built with small ball bearings could in theory curl its finger joint and is able touch behind the knuckle joint.

The diagram below demonstrates how it is possible to use ball bearings to touch the back of a finger.

Ball Bearing Robotic Finger Picture Credit Marc Corn

In reality this is a simple concept but it will take some engineering to make it happen, let me know what you all think in the comments below.