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Above: Keith Clark demonstrates his design for an innovative end effector which would inflate inside, and so grip, a tubular truss structure.

Back in 1978, another type of end effector under study for the Space Shuttle's Remote Manipulator System (RMS) was actually a balloon. The sort of aluminium truss beams proposed for use in space construction are quite fragile, so Keith Clark of NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center has proposed using a balloon that would be inflated inside the beam. As it expanded it would press gently and "grasp" the beam, distributing the load across the beam rather than crushing on one or two points. Such a tool could easily be used to grapple anything that had an opening. The balloon would probably be a bladder coated with Kevlar to protect it against sunlight and punctures.

Pneumatic inflatable end effector Keith H. Clark et al
See full patent here.  
Patent number: 4273505
Filing date: Sep 22, 1978
Issue date: Jun 16, 1981

A Slightly different tack was taken by B. F. Goodrich in a "rubber muscle" project. If a straight piece of rubber hose with specially wound reinforcing cord is pressurized with a liquid or gas it will bend to form an arc; if more pressure is applied, the curvature increases until the hose becomes a ring. Goodrich made a six-finger "hand" from this special hose that had some prehensile properties.

The below patent is most likely the patent related to the Goodrich "Rubber Muscle".

Inventor Nikolai Teleshev watching the operation of an integral robot designed by him.

Any further information on this inventor and robot gripper most welcomed.