{"id":44782,"date":"2015-03-13T19:17:13","date_gmt":"2015-03-13T11:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=44782"},"modified":"2015-03-13T19:26:26","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T11:26:26","slug":"iron-man-star-downey-presents-boy-with-bionic-arm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/03\/13\/iron-man-star-downey-presents-boy-with-bionic-arm\/","title":{"rendered":"`Iron Man’ star Downey presents boy with bionic arm"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"robert<\/a><\/p>\n

LOS ANGELES — Just like Tony “Iron Man” Stark, Robert Downey Jr. is a part-time superhero – at least in the eyes of one seven-year-old boy.<\/p>\n

In a video posted online Thursday, the actor, dressed as Stark, who becomes Iron Man in the movies, presents a working bionic prosthesis to seven-year-old Alex, who was born with a partially developed right arm.<\/p>\n

Downey opens a pair of metal cases marked Stark Industries, revealing an Iron Man arm and a smaller, red-and-gold prosthetic arm for Alex.<\/p>\n

The little boy, wearing a black shirt and red bow tie, sheepishly acknowledges in the video that he’s having an exchange with Iron Man, whom he also identifies as “Robert.”<\/p>\n

The bionic arm Alex received was created by engineering student Albert Manero, who builds and donates 3-D-printed bionic limbs to kids around the world.<\/p>\n

WATCH: Robert Downey Jr. presents ‘Iron Man’ arm to 7-year-old Alex<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Manero has been working with Alex’s family to perfect the digital arm, which Alex moves by flexing his biceps.<\/p>\n

Each bionic limb Manero builds takes 50 to 70 hours of printing time and about 12 hours of assembly, he said.<\/p>\n

His company, Limbitless Solutions, aims to eventually put 3-D printers in embassies around the world so children who live in countries without advanced medicine can benefit from Manero’s designs.<\/p>\n

The video was produced by the Collective Project, a social-media outreach program that gives students like Manero a greater presence online in hopes of inspiring others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LOS ANGELES — Just like Tony “Iron Man” Stark, Robert Downey Jr. is a part-time superhero – at least in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":44784,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","category-lifestyle","mauthors-the-associated-press1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}