Conventional mechanisms consist of separately manufactured parts and are therefore naturally affected by play. The presence of play strongly restrains, particularly in serial kinematic chains, the mechanisms' precision. The effects of the single bearing clearances add up and can lead to strong losses of accuracy. Besides this, the transition between static and sliding friction («stick-slip» effect) causes an hysteretic behaviour. The state of the system can therefore not be determined anymore by the input quantities, and this represents an additional source of inaccuracy. Compliant systems are generally free of play and - by a proper choice of material - also hysteresis-free.