An engineer born with 1 hand says Luke Skywalker's prosthetic inspired him to make a new hand for himself out of plastic bottles, and it cost just $800

• Enzo Romero, founder of LAT Bionics, is a 2022 TED fellow.
• Romero has found a way to make prosthetic limbs for $800 — a fraction of the usual ($40,000) cost.

Enzo Romero never felt embarrassed or out of place growing up with one hand.

He was born, as he says, in the "sacred valley of the Incas," of Cusco, Peru, surrounded by people who knew him well and weren't surprised to see him riding his bike or playing basketball using only a left hand.

But once he watched Luke Skywalker get outfitted with the prosthetic L-hand 980 in "The Empire Strikes Back," Romero started to wonder whether he could build such a right hand for himself — a limb like Skywalker's that could not only move, but feel.

Romero moved to the capital city of Lima, to study mechatronics and get a better grip on the engineering questions at hand.

"That is the moment," he told Insider, when people started to stare at his missing limb. He'd hide the end of his right arm in his hoodie, or deep in his pants pocket, to avoid any piteous glares.

Today, as founder of LAT Bionics, and a 2022 TED Fellow, Romero hasn't totally cracked the code for developing limbs that can feel, but he's certainly making them more affordable and available to his fellow Peruvians. And, he says, when people see the bright blue plastic-bottle built left hand he wears now, they stare in wide-eyed "astonishment," instead of feeling bad for him.

"We have the capacity to develop our own technology, having the necessities of our people in mind," he told a crowd at TED in Vancouver earlier this week.

What began as his own personal inquiry into developing a prosthetic hand for himself, "now belongs to my entire region" he said.

A prosthetic hand that costs $800 to $2,500, not $40,000

After years of research and development at university, Romero now sells low-cost hands that typically have just one motor inside, and can pinch, carry, and press.

So far, his company, LAT Bionics, has outfitted upwards of 20 people in Peru with new limbs. Many of Romero's clients lost their hands in work accidents, and they pay for their new limbs in installments.

The bionic hands Romero sells cost anywhere from $800 for a more mechanical, body-powered model, to $2,500 for a hand outfitted with an electromyographic (EMG) sensor, which controls the prosthetic hand through tiny muscle movements the person wearing it makes.

All of the LAT hand models are dramatically cheaper than the $40,000 mechanical prosthetics available elsewhere.

Romero's clients can hold, pinch, and twist with their new limbs, which are made from a filament manufactured with melted down PET plastic water and soda bottles, another cost-saving measure Romero developed at LAT.

Creating limbs that can type on a computer will cost more, but Romero has ideas for cheaper solutions

There are still some actions these low-cost hands can't perform, like click a mouse, or type on a computer.

Many of the people who use Romero's limbs have lost hands in work accidents, and are "getting back to manual labor," he said, but some want prosthetics that will allow them to do less dangerous computer jobs.

For that, LAT Bionics will need new solutions, possibly requiring two motors, and thus greater expense. Romero is also considering outfitting the hands with a switch, which could be a more low-cost way to solve the typing problem.

Fow now, Romero says one of his favorite activities to perform with his bright blue hand (which he wears about 50% of the time) is playing the guitar.

It used to hurt sometimes, using his handless right arm to press down on chords. But with fingers on the end, he can play music without pain.