Machine Tentacles

As the subtitle implies, the average end-of-year celebration these days includes a little toy that you blow air into, and it unrolls out for maybe half a meter. It has occurred to me that something like that could be used in giving a machine a manipulating tentacle. The basic construction is a tube with a piece of spring-steel all down its length. The steel is coiled up, forcing the tube to roll up (and the tube is built to roll up reasonably flat). If the tube was constructed of sturdy enough material, instead of paper like that New Year toy, and if the spring-steel was rather stronger, and if high-pressure air or even hydraulics was used, then this "tentacle" could be unrolled in the direction of some Object A by forcing fluid into its tube. Then, by releasing the pressure a little, the tube would start to roll up AND (a somewhat larger coil is needed, than the New Year toy has) wrap around Object A. The strength of this "wrap" would depend on the strength of the spring steel. Further release of the fluid pressure would cause Object A to be pulled toward the end of the tube into which pressure is applied. Object A would be rotated as this happens, of course.

If the tentacle was then pointed at a different direction, then by repressurizing the tube, it would again unroll, this time taking Object A to a new location.

Note that this Idea is Half-Baked because it offers no easy way to make the tentacle do anything other than roll straight out and straight back. Manipulating it from the middle of its length, to go off in various directions FROM its middle, is a thing that still needs thinking-about.