H.G. Wells was the first one to paint this picture in fiction, with a dramatic departure from the standard picture of a mechanical monstrosity; 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.
Festoon your monitor with these remarkable biomimetic robots from Festo:
Festo Aqua Ray Robot
Aqua_ray is a remote-controlled fish driven by water hydraulics, the shape and movements of which have been based on the model of a manta ray.
Robot Arm With Fluidic Muscles
The company describes it as a "combination of mechatronics and the biological model of a human being."
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Gaia - Why Stop With Just The Earth?
'But the stars are only atoms in larger space, and in that larger space the star-atoms could combine to form living matter, thinking matter, couldn't they?'
Microsoft VASA-1 Creates Personal Video From A Photo
'...to build up a video picture would require, say, ten million decisions every second. Mike, you're so fast I can't even think about it. But you aren't that fast.'