Flailing Arm Tube Man as the New Scarecrow The 20-foot tall inflatable man is used to shoo birds away from orchards and wineries.

Developed for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Advanced Inflatable Robot (AIR) has a blow-up arm that weighs only half a pound yet can lift and pull up to three.

iRobot wants to make their bomb defusing robot, PackBot, faster, cheaper, and safer by replacing its metal arm with a rubbery limb that can be pumped up to the proper stiffness.

And then there's the "soft touch" capability of inflatables. An inflatable robotic arm can adjust its "compliance," Jones said—it can make the arm more or less rigid, depending on the situation.

The Olympic origins of those wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube men By Joe Blevins | January 15, 2016 | 2:46pm Aux Features TV 0 ...

Replacing a cumbersome metal arm with an inflatable limb will lighten up PackBot, iRobot's rugged anti-bomb robot, making it faster, safer and cheaper ...

The Pentagon’s far-out research arm Darpa is preparing to award a $625,000 contract to iRobot — famous for its vacuum robot “Roomba” — for an inflatable robotic arm.