A group of students has forever changed a classmate’s life by building him a robotic hand.
CBS News reported that when Sergio Peralta initially tried to hide his deformity when he began his new year at Hendersonville High School in Nashville, Tennessee.
"In the first days of school, I honestly felt like hiding my hand," he told CBS News.
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He revealed to the outlet that he started being insecure about his missing hand as loads of students would ask him questions about it.
However, once Jeff Wilkins, Sergio’s engineering teacher, found out, he promised the pupil that the other students might be able to help out.
Over the next four weeks, the students began designing, 3D printing and sizing a prosthetic hand for Sergio.
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Sergio said that while he hadn’t met any of the students building his arm, he was introduced to them during the project.
"I didn't know them. So, I actually got introduced to them by the teacher, and then that's what I started working on, and I got to be friends with them," Sergio told WVTF.
He was pleased to find that students quickly embraced the task.
"You're supposed to be engineering, coming up with new ideas, solving issues, and just making things better than how they used to be," senior Leslie Jaramillo told the outlet.
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Despite not growing up with a fully formed hand, the 15-year-old revealed he could do almost everything.
He said he had figured out how to write with his left hand and could complete basic tasks such as carrying school items into class.
But unsure if the machinery would work, once Sergio fitted the prosthetic on his arm, it proved to be a huge success.
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For the first time ever, the high schooler could finally play catch with his right hand.
He told the outlet: “Living without a hand for 15 years and they actually offered me two is [something] actually pretty cool.
"No one has ever offered me this stuff – [it] changed my life.”
Henderson High School principal Bob Cotter told BBC News that the student’s robotic hand ‘is a testament to the students we have here who care about each other and the programme that Jeff Wilkins has built’.
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