A type of 3-DOF flexible pneumatic actuator (FPA) employing elongation pneumatic artificial muscles was developed. It was mainly composed by three pneumatic artificial muscles symmetrically distributed in parallel and three artificial muscles were fixed 120° each other in space. The pneumatic artificial muscle was a closed cavity formed by the rubber tube and the end covers, and the outer side of it was thin sheet restraint rings set compacted. The elastic skeletons were added among the artificial muscles to improve the rigidity and stability of FPA. Specially, the driving device of FPA was just the body of the actuator. The FPA has the advantages of small volume, light weight and multiple degrees of freedom, and it can axially elongate and bend in any direction by controlling the input gas pressure of different artificial muscles. According to the force and torque analysis, the nonlinear theoretical model was developed to simultaneously describe the elongation, bending direction and bending angle of the FPA. Further, the theoretical model was verified by experiments, and then the deforming properties of FPA were obtained under different ventilation modes. The results showed that the FPA was in arc shape approximately when it was bent;it had high flexibility to elongate in axial direction or bend in any direction which had the similarity to the biological muscles in the body flexibility, movement and driving ability. In summary, this type of FPA can be as flexible fingers or flexible joints applied to fruit and vegetable picking manipulator or agricultural robot.