German firm Festo put out this cool visualization of a robotic tentacle arm; it would be actuated by air pressure rather than the usual servomechanisms.
(Robotic 'Handling Assistant')
H.G. Wells was the first one to paint this picture in fiction (as far as I know); readers recall the steel tentacles from his 1898 novel War of the Worlds:
Seen nearer, the Thing was incredibly strange, for it was no mere insensate machine driving on its way. Machine it was, with a ringing metallic pace, and long, flexible, glittering tentacles (one of which gripped a young pine tree) swinging and rattling about its strange body.
Humanoid Robots Tickle The Ivories
'The massive feet working the pedals, arms and hands flashing and glinting...' - Herbert Goldstone, 1953.
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MIT Computerized Bionic Leg Is Part Of The User
'The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain, through the mediation of the electronic brain in the leg.'