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Spherical Motor Creation
There's an interesting story concerning the development of a circular based-motor. What's interesting about this motor is that it can spin to apply force in three dimensions -- some researchers at Johns Hopkins unveiled it recently. It looks pretty cool -- many magnets involved in it.
There are basically two applications that spring to my mind:
First, an "omnidirectional" wheel. Ok, for this you do not need 3D as 2D will be sufficient. Plus you need a pretty clean surface, else the motor suspension = drive axis will be clogged up with dirt. A smooth "wheel" (=ball) will be better for high motor efficiency, but will increase slipperiness, too. So I guess directly using this drive as motored wheel is not the best choice.
Second, yu can cinstruct a spherical joint similar to the human hip or shoulder joint. With this you limit the movement arc to a cone with ~140 degrees opening. Spherical joints are especially interesting for major static/suspending joints - like hip or shoulder. But there are the shortcomings of this design:
The major problem will be the low torque and missing self-locking. Self-locking means, that the system does not have to use energy to keep the joint in that position. Excellent example for this is the worm-gear: nearly completely self-locking and high torques possible. In comparison this 3D-"freely spinning" joint is a (low power) direct driven, low-torque, non-locking.
As you have to use distributed permanent (=low power) magnets, the torque cannot be increased much (compared to classical e-motors with exclusively electro-magnets). Plus - as you need a high number of e-magnets - the motor is quite heavy.
All in all a nice idea, but not a good choice for most current uses IMHO.
-DVK
"The right to figure things out for yourself is the only true freedom everyone shares. Go use it"-R.A.Heinlein
Think about it, you couldn't just have loose bearings beneath you - you'd need something that held its position and could move any direction to correct your movement to make it feel as if you're on solid ground.
If you could make them about half the size of marbles, wow, the possibilities would be endless. That one idea of the spinning discs on tables to rearrange things is already outdated. This would rock!
That's going to happen to humanity eventually. We keep packing more and more into less and less (for example, more schooling in shorting time frame - you easily knew twice as much by your senior year in HS than your parents).
We're going to need to take the smaller and more trivial tasks off our hands. There will be no alternative. What's the solution? Certainly not a group of people engineer to be simple/stupid (Brave New World), but rather, machines.
Right now, robots are unfriendly, imposing, and insanely clumsy. We *need* them to be able to move and act naturally as we do. We need them to not be scary. We need them to be more fluid. They'll inevitably have to interact with us in a personal fashion.
And if you're still unconvinced, think about the applications of robotics technology with fluid, human-like motion in medicine. Wouldn't it be nice to give amputees brand new arms that move flawlessly when compared to the real thing?
I'm tired, so I'm not going to go on any longer... but wow, the possibilities!