In this documentary segment, teenage prosthetic pioneer Tilly Lockey shares her journey from a healthy infant to a child who faced a life‑threatening illness, leading to the amputation of her hands and the adoption of myoelectric bionic arms made by Open Bionics. She explains how the arms work—muscle sensors control finger movements and offer four grip modes—while emphasizing a design shift away from realistic appearance toward functionality and style. Tilly discusses the emotional impact of being different, advocating pride in disability and celebrating uniqueness. She recounts learning to use the prostheses, mastering everyday tasks, and turning the experience into a platform: creating makeup tutorials on YouTube, curating fashionable prosthetic “cases,” and using social media to reshape public perception from pity to admiration. The narrative also includes supportive remarks from a parent/carer, highlighting the family’s resolve to give Tilly a full life. Finally, Tilly looks ahead, expressing excitement about what the next five years of bionic technology could bring and urging others to embrace their differences.
Chapters
I think if you have a disability, you should be proud because you're not like anyone else. You're unique. That's what's personal to you. Hi, my name is Tilly and I'm the first teenager in the UK to get bionic arms. So the arms are controlled by my muscle sensors. There's sensors on the inside, so whatever I do with my muscles, I can control the fingers. So if I squeeze the muscles, they'll close. That they are flexible open, and then they have 4 different grip modes which makes it a lot easier to hold different types of things. So they've got like just a normal close like that, or they've got a grasp. I will also like to use it as a thumbs up. I love to like match them with my outfit. I've got quite a lot of cases. I've got like 6 or 7 pairs. It's like picking out a new handbag, picking what shoes you're going to wear, matching it all together, and I just love it.
It's just so fun.
It's cool to be different because you're unique, like nobody else can decorate their own hands. When I was first born, I was just like any normal baby, completely happy, healthy. But when I was 15 months old, I fell really ill. I was originally diagnosed with an ear infection and sent home, but it just really escalated from there.
There was something in the back of my mind that was like saying, is it just an ear infection though? And it wasn't until later on when I went to change her nappy, we noticed the— I say they look like bruise-like marks. Grabbed a tumbler off the draining board and pressed it against her skin and they didn't go away. This woman came over to me and just said, I need you to sit down. And she was just like, we think your daughter's going to die. And I was just like, what? I suddenly felt like really lightheaded and like, they can't be saying this to us. It's my baby. Like, what do they mean? Like, this can't happen to her. Every day we were just like, is she— will she live? Will she live? That's all I kept asking. And the nurses were just like, we don't know, we can't say, we don't know anything.
They did say they had to amputate my hands, and of course my family did worry about that, but for them that was a really small price to pay save my life.
It was one of those things that it's really unfortunate, but at least she's got a life. I was just like, well, I'm gonna make our life the best life she could ever possibly have.
I've had a couple of hands in the past, and they were all trying to be really, really realistic, and they were really expensive. We just felt like all the money was going towards how they looked rather than how they actually worked, because these hands couldn't even open wide enough to hold a up. So we thought, why not just go the opposite way, forget about the realism, just go off of how it works. As you can see, they don't really look like any normal hand. They are very, like, futuristic and stylish. I want to do things with them just because I think they're so cool, and I love wearing them. Every day I'm finding out new things I can do with them. I actually started getting into makeup and stuff. It was a bit Difficult at first because I haven't got any memories to look back on of how I would hold certain objects. So I had to, like, study how my mum or my sisters and my friends would hold certain objects and then try to mirror that while in my own hands. And it did take a while to start off with, but practice makes perfect, and I just kept at it, and that's where we are today. When I first started putting makeup tutorials on YouTube, people thought it was really impressive and wanted to see more of like how I did it. Hi everyone, it's Tilly and welcome back to my YouTube channel. I decided to do it more and I like doing it anyway. And of course I started having only one hand, one hand and doing it, whereas now I've got two hands so it's a bit easier. Izzy, would you like glam today or natural? Um, glam. I like to use my arm as a beauty blender sometimes because it's just like the same shape. Do you trust Tilly to do your makeup? Um, don't lie. After last night, she poked me in the eye with mascara, so I did it once for a YouTube video. It doesn't bother me when people stare at me because when I had hands in the past, it was kind of like looks of, "Ew, that's weird," like disgust almost. And it's almost like you should be ashamed to be different because your hand had to look like everybody else's just so you could have a normal life. And that just completely needs to change. I think social media plays a really big part because I've got quite a big following on there. I've been posting loads of stuff about it and like promoting and showing everyone how cool they can be. It just makes me feel really, really confident because In the past, people would look at me and I would be bothered. I found that my bionic hands get a lot of stares, but in a more positive way. Like, people are now looking at them with amazement and smiles on their faces rather than like sad and feeling sorry for me, because I don't like when people feel sorry for me because I just didn't look at myself as any different to other people.
I feel every time I see Tilly, whether she's wearing her hands or not, I always feel so proud and inspired by her, like every single day. She's an absolute dream child. She's so mature for her age. She's so caring and loving and always puts other people before herself.
These hands have been made by Open Bionics in 5 years, and if this is what they can achieve in 5, just think of what they can achieve in another 5. So I'm really excited about the future. I think, like, if you have a disability, you should be proud because you're not like anyone else. You're unique, and that's what's personal to you. And I just want to show people that it's okay to be different, and it's almost, like, cool to be different. I just— I like to kind of put that through to as many people as possible.
