Robert Downey Jr. offered his bionic expertise as "Iron Man" to provide a new 3D-printed bionic limb to a young boy born without an arm.
Downey teamed up with the Collective Project and Albert Monero, an engineering doctoral student at University of Central Florida, to present Alex Pring with a new 3D-printed arm designed to look like his Marvel superhero character's suit.
The 7-year-old Pring was born with an undeveloped right arm that ends before his elbow. His new mechanical arm allows him to grab items by sending a pulse to the hand when he clenches his muscle above the device.
The "Avengers" star brought the arm from his Iron Man suit and Pring's bionic arm in cases marked "Stark Industries," the company run by his character, Tony Stark, in the Marvel movies. Pring is a big fan of superheroes and previously had an arm styled after the "Transformers" character Optimus Prime.
Monero started creating 3-D printed bionic limbs after hearing a radio interview with the person who created the first 3D-printed mechanical hands. Eight weeks later, he gave Pring his first arm.
His Limbitless Solutions is funded through donations. It plans to take the project to the United Nations and UNICEF so it can provide limbs to children around the world.
