So, this Japanese company called Babot has made a new advance in the oft-neglected field of balloon technology. Their concept is intriguing: By putting extra flaps of skin in joints on the balloon, and using computer-controlled gusts to change the pressure inside, you can make it move. The description from Babot’s site is thus …

The internal pressure fluctuation of the structure can be controlled into a small rate during the expansion, large motion for expanding the structure can be quickly and smoothly achieved by small force, and therefore, the large motion can quickly respond to a control signal from the computer, and can play a powerful presence.

… though I suspect that text may suffer a bit from mangled translation. Anyway, I was particularly thrilled to see that to highlight their technology, they’d made a moving balloon of … an octopus! Check here for a movie of it in action.

(Thanks to John T. Unger for this one!)