In this YouTube Q&A, Tilly Lockey shares her personal story and insights about living without hands and using 3D‑printed bionic prostheses. She explains how meningitis septicemia at 15 months led to bilateral hand amputation, and how she later partnered with Open Bionics to co‑design customizable, 3D‑printed prosthetic hands for children. Tilly describes the hands' technical operation—muscle‑sensor control, multiple grip modes, a manual wrist, and current lack of tactile feedback—while highlighting the aesthetic focus on personalization (colors, lights, themed casings). She recounts using the prostheses for everyday tasks such as makeup, multitasking on a train, and a specific incident that sparked her makeup videos. Tilly offers advice to other child amputees, emphasizing determination and independence, and outlines her hopes for future features like an automatic wrist, sense of touch, projectors, and a personal‑assistant integration. The video concludes with a call to action for viewers to like, subscribe, and stay tuned.
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Hi everyone, it's Tilly and welcome back to another video. Today I'm going to be answering the questions that I get asked pretty much on a daily basis, so if you want to know more about my life, my bionic hands, and my positive mindset, then keep on watching. So to start off, let's address the elephant in the room: where are my hands? Um, basically it's a very long and eventful story, but I'll try to shorten it down as much as possible. I was rushed to the hospital when I was 15 months old with a disease called meningitis septicemia. It's basically like a blood poisoning in your body and not great. So I got rushed to the hospital with that and they basically said that I wasn't going to live and if I did, I wouldn't be able to do anything like run, walk. But somehow I managed to pull through and prove them wrong and I'm here today. But they did have to amputate my hands because The blood poison had just well and truly destroyed my hands. They were all black and they just had to go, so we had to get rid, but it's alright, I'm here. The next question is, how did I get involved with Open Bionics? If you didn't know, I'm currently working with a company called Open Bionics. They are making prosthetic hands and changing lives all around the world of amputees, and I'm basically helping them develop and design 3D-printed bionic hands for kids. And for kids mainly because when I was little and I just like got my hands amputated, there wasn't really anything out there and that was a serious issue. And when I was little, I used to think, okay, I lost my hands when I was 15 months old, I can't remember anything different. But I just couldn't stop thinking about the fact that some people had lived having hands their whole life and then all of a sudden they're just gone. I didn't understand how those people would cope. Like, I know a lot of people who are also amputees and follow me on my social media and on here, but for the people who do have hands, imagine if you've had hands your whole life, imagine if you have hands right now, and then tomorrow you had to go in the hospital to get them amputated. So it's obviously a really scary thought. You think, well, how am I going to do anything? And that's who I was thinking about when I firstly I just really wanted to help because since I lost my hands so young, I've adapted really well and I can like kind of do pretty much everything that anyone with hands can do. So I'm really fortunate in that sense, but I know other people aren't as fortunate. So I just mainly, it was to help them people. But I mean, if I can get something out of it too, that's amazing. And so I'm so happy that I've got hands and binder cancel. So this is one of the hands. I actually have two, but the other one's charging downstairs at the moment, but I can show you these ones. So this is it. It is completely 3D printed, and it's very different to the prosthetics I've had in the past, working with 4 different companies since I lost my hands. So yeah, I've had my fair share of trying all these different hands. So them ones were like really, really realistic, like my last pair were from a different company and they were so realistic, made completely of silicone. They were based off of my older sister's hands, so they had all the freckles, all the wrinkles, all the nails and everything, but they didn't move as realistically as you'd want them to. Like, they moved really slowly, like they couldn't open wide enough to hold a fruit chew. They could open like that wide in that grip mode and that's it. So it was just really awkward to do day-to-day things with them. And I just really love how these ones are trying to embrace the fact that you're different and completely straying away from like looking like everyone else. Because obviously when you're walking down the street, you don't see someone with a hand like this, do you? So, and I really love that about it because like I'm not ashamed and I doubt anyone else is. We just— and I think it makes it like really, really fun for kids because these are completely customizable, all these cases. You can have whatever color, whatever pattern, you can have lights in it if you want. It's just so personal— personalized, and I think that's so much better than trying to be the same as everyone else because I'm unique and I kind of like it. So I think they're really fashionable, to be honest. We found out about Open Bionics online. My mom was just searching around because I'd had, uh, quite a break from working with prosthetic company just because we weren't really getting anywhere and we just needed technology to evolve a bit. And so, I think I was like 10, maybe 9, and my mum thought, well, should we get back in there? I was like, okay. So we went online, we Googled a bit, and then we came across Open Bionics and we really loved what they were doing because they were working with like Disney and Marvel at the time, getting like Iron Man hands and Elsa hands, and we really loved that idea. So we filled out the form saying why we want to take part, and out of like, I mean, there's not many amputees to be like in the world, but I think out of a couple of hundred, they chose me to work with them. So I was so excited. We met them down in Bristol and they were just so supportive, so nice. Went out to Nando's afterwards. It was just, yeah, they were such a nice company, and that's how we came across them. Okay, on to question 3. Question 3 is, what is my favorite thing to do with the hands? And you probably know if you watch my YouTube videos because I do have a makeup playlist and I love doing makeup with them. Um, I think I'm just at that age, like I'm a 13-year-old girl, all my friends are getting into the makeup and stuff and I wanted to join in, so I started doing it with my bionic hands and it just evolved from there. So yeah, I think that's probably my favourite thing to do with them, doing my makeup. Next question is, what can I do with my bionic hands? So as I said before, I can do makeup. Since I lost my hands so young, I've already said like I can do most things, but what the bionic hands really helped me with is multitasking. I was recently going to London on the train and I was able to like hold my hot chocolate in one hand and then pull the suitcase in the other. So I would never have been able to do that without the hands because I always have to do everything like together with the two of them because things don't just stick to me like in one arm. So yeah, they definitely help me with multitasking the most, I'd say. And now the opposite of that, what can't I do with the bionic hands? So I can't feel at the moment. I know they're definitely working on feeling. I don't know if it'll be like a proper sense of touch like that you can feel with your fingertips, but, or if it'll be like a vibration as soon as I've got a good grip on something. I'm not a scientist, I don't know how they're gonna do that, but I know they're definitely working on getting some kind of feedback for a sense of touch or something like that. There's a manual wrist at the moment, which is alright if you've got one normal hand, one bionic hand, because you can just hold the button and turn it. I'll show you it here. So this is it, like, that's the the button here that you push in and then you turn it. And yeah, it's fine if I'm got one hand off, one hand on, but when I'm wearing both hands, I can't really press that button down and turn it on my own. So I think they're working on an automatic wrist as well, which would definitely help me a lot. The next question is, how exactly did I get into doing makeup with my bionic hands on? And I mentioned the age thing before, um, all my friends were doing it, so I thought I'd join in. And but the full story is kind of a funny one. It was Christmas jumper day at school actually, and so I was going to my next lesson and I just tripped and fell on the floor. And since I had a recent operation on my left leg to lengthen it, I was really trying to protect that leg. And so I broke my fall with my right elbow and it got the full force of it. I went to my next lesson, it really hurt, but I thought like it would wear off after a while and it would be fine. But it just didn't by the end of music, which is my last lesson. So I was like, right, something's gone wrong here. So I went to the student support and then the teacher like called my mom, went to the hospital, and they told me that I had fractured my arm literally days before Christmas. So I was really annoyed, and I had a cast from here all the way down to like where my arm finishes, so it was really hard to do anything over Christmas as well. So I was like, oh great. But yeah, I had lots of makeup on my Christmas list, and then when it all came, um, I really wanted to like try that out and see what I could do with it, but I had a bit of a situation. How could I possibly do my makeup with one hand? One arm, even. So I was just like, that's not gonna work. But then I remembered, hang on a second, I've got bionic hands, I could do this. So I got my bionic hand on, and then I was like, right, come on, we can do this. So, and yeah, it just went from there. I started doing my makeup with my hand on. My mom was like, oh my God, Tilly, that is amazing, you should definitely record it and like put it out on the internet. And I was like 'Alright,' and so I did, and it just skyrocketed from there. I've done loads of newspaper interviews, everyone's really interested in it, which I think is absolutely amazing because I love making the videos too. So yeah, that's how it all happened. This next one's quite an important one. I should have really addressed it earlier, but it is: how do the hands actually work? So there's basically muscle sensors on the inside of the arm here and here, I believe, just placed on where my actual muscles are. And they were all like censored and measured up and stuff in the upper biceps lab. They put like stickers on me like to test my muscle strength and force of it, kind of. But it's just, it's really great because after you've done that, you literally just slip your arm in, turn it on, and it just works straight away. So to make it move, I can flex to open the fingers, squeeze to close fingers, and then if I open the fingers and then flex again, then I will change the grip mode. So now, as you can see, my thumb has moved. And then if I go on like the pinch grip. If I change grips on there, then it turns into the tripod grip, and etc. The next question is, what is the best feature about the hands? I would definitely say the customizable casings, because I think it just makes it so much more special to that person that they can have anything they want. I've got some hand cases with my autograph on the side, so I had my name on, and the fact that they just clip on and off so easily and you can just switch it up however you like, I think that's really great. The next question I always get asked is, what advice would you give to another child who had to have their hands amputated? And I definitely would say just to have a good determination, because I think that's the only thing that kept me going. When I was little, I was stuck in a room with my my mom and I wanted some food, but I had it in my head that I couldn't open the door to get myself some food. So I told my mom, 'Mom, open the door, I want some food.' But she was just like, 'No, I'm not going to open the door. I'm going to let you do it yourself.' And I sat at it for not very long. I don't know why I thought I couldn't do it, but I sat at it for like 5 minutes or something. But then as soon as I opened the door, she said my face just lit up and I was just so happy, and ever since then I've just had to do everything myself. I'm a really independent person, so I just feel like if you keep at it, then you'll get there in the end. The last question I'm going to answer today is, what do I hope the hands will have in the future? And when I first started Open Bionics, I was really optimistic about everything. I wanted like a projector in it, I wanted like lasers coming out of it, I wanted like a personal assistant in the hands, and that is like really crazy for me to think but I think a personal assistant would be awesome. I would love to have an automatic wrist, as I said before, and a sense of touch as well would be amazing. And then I'm just sorted. That's all I need, a personal assistant, please. Anyways, that is the end of the video. If you did like it, make sure to give it a big thumbs up and hit the subscribe button and the notification bell next to it to get notified every single time I post a video. Hope you enjoyed, and I'll see you next time. Bye!
