Those are the words of Jaeyoun (Jay) Kim, an Iowa State University associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. This kind of movement isn't ideal for some of the more delicate procedures seen in medicine. So, his team of engineers developed a robot that wraps tentacles around the object gently.

They demonstrated how it works by having the robot wrap a tentacle around an ant's thorax, trapping it without squeezing it to death. You can see how small and precise the tentacle is in the image above.

The researchers were able to fabricate the microtubes made out of hollow PDMS, a transparent elastomer that can be a liquid or a soft, rubbery solid, which they constructed to be 8mm long and less than a hundredth of an inch wide. One portion of the tube was sealed, while air was pumped in and out of the other side. This function, combined with the tube's asymmetrical wall thickness, allowed the tube to curl or straighten depending on air pushed in or out.