Enzo Romero is 32 years old, he is from Urubamba, in Cusco“the sacred valley of the Incas,” he says proudly, and was born without a right hand. Perhaps this fact is what has most marked his life, his years of study and work, as it motivated him to create a bionic prosthesis and to be recognized today by the United Nations.
The Peruvian researcher was selected as one of the 17 Young Leaders for the Sustainable Development Goals (Young Leaders for the SDGs), for the period 2025–2027, a recognition that highlights his scientific work.
Romero is not only a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP), he is also co-founder of LAT Bionics, a project with which he develops personalized bionic upper limb prostheses.
He has worked on several models that have been tested on more than 100 people from Peru, Mexico, Ecuador and Chile. In addition, there are about 300 people on the waiting list.
He currently teaches courses in automatic control and biomechatronics and is a thesis advisor. We spoke with the teacher and researcher about his recent distinction, the bionic prosthesis project that he himself uses, and the challenge of artificial intelligence (AI).
-How do you receive this appointment? Did you expect it?
No, because the process was extremely demanding. I understand that more than 150 countries participated, nearly 30 thousand applicants, and in the end we only had 17 people selected.
It is an immense joy, and above all a responsibility. I feel that, that it is not simply an award, but that it comes not with a job, but with a responsibility.
-And what does the appointment indicate? What were the reasons for your choice?
What I focus on has to do with health and well-being, which is precisely the issue of generating prostheses for people with disabilities in Latin America.
We are also very committed to reducing inequalities. We maintain that life is not the same for a person without a disability as for a person with a disability, whether it is due to a congenital condition or due to an accident, or life itself, as one grows old.
And, additionally, we are committed to the generation of technology locally. Not wait for these types of devices to come from abroad, but let’s bet on the talent we have in each region, in each country, to be able to generate solutions. I believe that this combo is what has allowed us to advance in all these stages and be selected.
– I wanted to ask you about bionic prostheses. What do they consist of and why are they important, also speaking from a technological point of view?
I was born without my right hand and from a very young age my idea was to have a prosthesis like that of Luke Skywalker, from the Star Wars movies, and somehow the dream, the desire, stayed somewhere in my mind. So, I stopped living in Cusco, I came to live in Lima, I entered the Catholic University with the support of my parents and decided to study mechatronics. Eventually I studied a year abroad, as part of the exchange program, because I had seen that in the Czech Republic there was a professor who was working on this 3D printing proposal, aligned with hand prostheses, robotic hands.
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Upon returning with that experience, I joined the research group in biomechanics and applied robotics. [en la PUCP] under the direction of Dr. Dante Elías, in which we design and develop assistive technologies for people with disabilities, at any level: rehabilitation, hands, legs, speech issues and others. And in 2016, with a fund from Concytec, we designed and developed a hand prosthesis that could move each of the fingers independently. I had thought of a system that could transmit to a person the ability to feel simply by squeezing their forearm with the same force with which they held an object.
– Now, is the prosthesis you are using unique? How have they worked on it?
Correct, it is personalized. It is made according to the size of my hand, because what we have done is use digital manufacturing technologies. So, we have a 3D scanner to have a digitized scan of the amputated section.
Besides…
Young leaders
Since 2016, and every two years, the Office of the United Nations Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth has highlighted exceptional young people who are leading efforts to support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), according to the website. United Nationsyoung leaders can participate in training programs, key events at the UN and other activities.
Then, on the computer we have generated our own software with which only with the lengths of a finger, its diameter and its length, we can generate the rest of the fingers of the hand, the palm and the prosthetic socket, which would be the most important area. Once we have all the pieces, we use 3D printing to manufacture each of these hands, which are made to the shape and most importantly, I believe, the weight according to what the person needs, so that the back is not unbalanced with respect to the center.
– And can they also make movements? Are the fingers articulated?
Correct, depending on the model of the prosthesis. In this case, this is our “Maki” model. [prótesis que usa]which is only mechanically activated. So, with a slight movement I can get the hand to open and close.
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And, furthermore, since the length of the extremity is long, I have no problem being able to type on a computer, hold objects, or use it as a support hand. On the other hand, when the levels of amputation are higher, we do work with proposals that are increasingly electronic, with control by myoelectric sensors, with an artificial intelligence control that can be placed inside the arm, which improves the ability to recognize the person’s intention when they are trying to move the fingers of their hand.
– Now, we talk about bionic prostheses. What is the difference with a common prosthesis, which is even sold on the market?
Let’s say it has to do with what level of control makes the prosthesis work, what type of physiological signals are taken from the body.
At no time does our development involve surgery or trying to place electrodes inside the body. No, everything is done superficially, quite safely. What happens is, to explain it simply, when one tries to move the muscles, whether to make a fist or something else, one can notice that the muscle either contracts or expands, every time we try to move our fingers. It is a decision that the brain makes, it travels through the nervous system, the muscles contract or expand and with that the fingers manage to open or close. What we do is we place sensors that go above the body and that can read that small voltage differential (which is its technical name) when the muscle is either contracting or expanding.
So with different control strategies, that means a tiny computer, a microcontroller installed inside the prosthesis or the prosthetic socket, can interpret what those intention signals are and then get the motors to move depending on what the person wanted to do.
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In addition, a bionic prosthesis incorporates a battery, which you charge as you would your cell phone and you walk around the world making your prosthesis work.
– Today everyone is talking about artificial intelligence. In terms of prosthetics, what opportunities can AI provide?
Many. What happens is that in classic models, this is a very automatic control issue… the simplest explanation is as if it were a paralyzing buzzer, that of Chapulín. When he tapped once, he paused, tapped twice, and could move again. Let’s imagine that touching once is the intention of a muscle when it contracted. So, if the person contracted, you can make the prosthesis just close. And when it contracts twice, let the prosthesis open. What is happening? That the level of positive cases is usually relatively low. Let’s say that out of 10 attempts, six can be identified with complete clarity using this methodology.
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Artificial intelligence is introduced into the prosthetic field, or in the field of prosthetics in general, to increase this number of positive success cases. So, With artificial intelligence control you can have better recognition of the intention of what the person is trying to do. Go, for example, from these six out of 10, raising them to eight out of 10. And this is very important in the prosthetic issue, because if you feel that your prosthesis listens to you, it will increase the number of times you are going to use it, right? Because you will feel that it is a technology that is useful to you.
– Professor, you have been named as one of the 17 young personalities, and as a person who uses a prosthesis, what message could you also give to young people who are working in technology and who are in these situations?
Yes, from what I have seen internationally and locally, since I teach classes at the university and I see the potential value that we have in our engineering students and other branches, I would believe that the most important thing is, first of all, not to lose faith, to continue betting because it is worth it. This matters, it is a cause worth committing to, because, finally, if you decide to work on solution issues for people with disabilities, Even if you don’t have an impact on millions of users like you could have in any other type of venture, such as electronic wallets and so on, you are solving the life of a person who, without that assistive technology, couldn’t do anything else. Whether it’s a wheelchair, making a prosthetic hand and making a system that allows you to speak or recover or allows you to give back the ability to communicate.
So, I would believe that my recommendation to young people is that they continue betting on the generation of this type of technology, if you chose it as a thesis topic, if you chose it as a research project, I assure you that the impact that you can generate with this, because it is not enough for you to take it as a product in the end, suddenly your thesis drives the development of someone taking that as a reference and building their own device, but this is how we work in research.