His mind reminds some observers of Steve Jobs, others of Thomas Edison.
His creations earned him a handshake from President Barack Obama, an internship from NASA and a story in Popular Mechanics. In high school, Easton LaChappelle gave a TED talk on 3D printing and launched a company, Unlimited Tomorrow, backed by investors like Microsoft and Tony Robbins.
A lifetime of achievements already behind him, LaChappelle is just 24 years old, not far removed from the lab in his childhood bedroom where he began building human-like, robotic hands and arms.
"I fell in love with the process of turning an idea into reality - the process of inventing," LaChappelle says. "That's something I live and breathe."
But to truly understand the young entrepreneur, it's best to start with one quiet encounter - a defining moment that sparked LaChappelle to action and still fuels him forward.
Unlimited Tomorrow founder, Easton LaChappelle, at the Science and Engineering Fair where he presented a robotic arm
In 2012, he entered his first home-crafted, animatronic arm at the Colorado Science and Engineering Fair. He'd learned robotics through YouTube and the open source community. To create that arm, he used a rudimentary 3D printer that he received for his 16th birthday. For a bit of visual flash, he linked the limb to a control glove, allowing LaChappelle to operate the fingers and greet visitors with a handshake.
While standing behind his display table at the science fair, he noticed a 7-year-old girl cautiously and silently approach the arm. She seemed clearly mesmerized by its intricate design and the hand's wiggling fingers.
Then LaChappelle saw why. Where her right arm should be, she wore a prosthetic limb with a simple claw for a hand - a model far less advanced than what he'd constructed in his bedroom for $200. Her prosthetic arm had cost $80,000, the girl's parents said. Worse, she would need a larger arm each year until she reached adulthood.
"It took me by surprise. This was a big problem, I realized," LaChappelle says. "I had built my arm for fun. But now I was seeing the gravity of this little girl using that device.
"I began to ask myself new questions. Like: How can we use the technology that's around us now - 3D printing, 3D scanning and AI - to rejuvenate a prosthetics industry that's clearly been stagnant and previously was built around profit, not around patients?" he adds.
LaChappelle presenting a prosthetic arm model made with the help of 3D printing technology
Answers to such ambitious questions are now emerging at the headquarters of Unlimited Tomorrow in the Upstate New York town of Rhinebeck. Flanked by wood plank walls, LaChappelle and a small team of engineers, technicians (and a shop dog named JoJo) are manufacturing highly personalized prosthetics that look natural, have full functionality and are far more affordable than traditional parts.
Their mission is to empower amputees around the world - especially children and teenagers - with intuitive, customized limbs. The devices, enabled with AI, are precisely shaped by a pair of HP Jet Fusion 580 color 3D printers that operate in the center of the shop. Using a durable nylon material, the printers can produce eight arms every 24 hours.
What's more, the limbs can be printed to match any of 450 skin tones and in the exact shape and size to match recipients' bodies.
The devices come with a wireless charging base and carry a multi-day battery life. And with 3D printing, each arm weighs only about one and a half pounds, far lighter than traditional prosthetic arms, which can weigh eight pounds or more.
A young girl, Momo Sutton, wearing an Unlimited Tomorrow arm offering much more movement than alternative prosthetics
"Heavy devices are actually one of the main causes of the poor adoption rate for prosthetics," LaChappelle says.
"There's a huge gap in the prosthetics industry - only 5 percent of the world has access to prosthetic limbs - an awful number. When I looked into this, I knew I had to do something," he adds. "And half of the people who have a prosthetic limb don't wear it because of how poorly they perform."
For most of his life, photographer and artist Chad Kleitsch, 51, decided not to wear a prosthetic arm. The man-made alternatives were simply that bad, he found.
Born with a congenitally shorter right arm that ends about three inches below the elbow, he recalls a childhood moment when a doctor proudly showed him the latest artificial arm. It looked real enough. But its mannequin hand was equipped with a thumb and finger that only offered one movement - pinching.
Kleitsch knew his natural limb was better. With that, he deftly played soccer, Frisbee, football and baseball. He became an art handler, hanging Picassos and Van Goghs in galleries and museums. He mastered photography. He never looked back at his childhood decision. Until he met LaChappelle at a coffee shop in Rhinebeck.
"He is bright eyed, with a face and demeanor that make him seem like he's eternally 17 years old," Kleitsch says. "I barely had a sip of my coffee when he introduced himself. He was exuberant and excited, and I almost thought he was trying to sell me life insurance."
"Look," LaChappelle told him, "I would love for you to come by Unlimited Tomorrow where we can talk and maybe work together on a project I'm doing, making these new prosthetics."
The artist agreed on the spot. He would offer his experienced critiques of the devices. And he would try one of the new arms.
Unlimited Tomorrow's robotic limbs can match 450 skin tones
Today, Kleitsch is one of 100 people trialing and testing the printed prosthetics. He often drops by Unlimited Tomorrow, where the HP 3D printers are surrounded by laser cutters, plastic bins full of parts, worktables and white boards.
"It's kind of like Tony Stark in a barn," Kleitsch says, referring to the alter ego of Iron Man.
"Easton is pioneering something that will change prosthetics forever," he adds.
To date, Kleitsch has worn four different versions of the arm Unlimited Tomorrow printed for him. Sensors are placed inside the socket. He uses muscle movement in his own arm to trigger sensors to activate the device. Smart algorithms constantly monitor the muscle sensor data and interpret the user's intent into hand movements. The hand has about six different positions that can be adopted to tasks he's performing.
The 100 people in Unlimited Tomorrow's test group live in 15 countries and range in age from 7 to 70. (The World Health Organization estimates 30 million people in the world are in need of prosthetic and orthotic devices.) The company created a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo and received a separate donation from its partner Arrow Electronics, Tony Robbins, and other partners, raising $500,000 to make and donate arms to the trial group.
Unlimited Tomorrow is in the middle of the trial group and sends each member of the group a 3D scanner. With the help of family or friends, they use the scanner to capture the specific proportions and coloration of their full arm and the unique shape and detail of their residual limb.
That data is uploaded to the company and entered into custom software that designs a prosthetic mirroring their full arm, including finger length and width. The staff uses the same data to digitally sculpt and print the arm's socket - personalized to ensure each device attaches to each customer.
LaChappelle demonstrating his technology to President Barack Obama
"We're now sending many arms out each week," LaChappelle says. "We'll soon be completing (that trial). During this phase, we've made significant upgrades to the motors in the arms. We want to generate a device that can last three to five years in the field, which is what the industry strives for."
Cellular technology embedded in each arm allows the company to remotely push firmware updates to refine the devices. That technology also collects analytics, offering "a new lens on usage data" for prosthetics that help people complete daily tasks, play sports or tinker with hobbies, LaChappelle adds.
Unlimited Tomorrow will go to market early in 2020, selling its devices at a price between $5,000 and $10,000 per unit - one-tenth of the cost of similarly advanced prosthetic arms.
To boost that affordability, the company also plans to offer alternative purchase options to help lower the barrier to purchase.
And Unlimited Tomorrow hopes to create an upgrade program to for children when they outgrow their current device. more inexpensive "service model" arm for children. In some cases, certain components like motors, electronics and batteries can be upcycled and placed into a larger, 3D-printed shell that the company would ship to a customer when their child outgrows the original.
While it remains focused on producing upper-extremity, below-the-elbow prosthetics, Unlimited tomorrow is starting to explore an eventual expansion to make above-elbow arms and lower-extremity prosthetics like above- and below-the-knee legs, LaChappelle says.
From the tiny Colorado mountain town of Mancos, where LaChappelle grew up and operated his bedroom lab, his mother watches in wonder at the life arc of a young man who not long ago spotted a glaring deficit in the world and set off to solve it.
Now, Julia Whelihan can only marvel at what comes next.
"I see him being someone changing the world for a better place," she says. "We all know the story of Edison. I see Easton as the modern-day version. But he is a modern inventor with a kind heart and a gentle soul."
"I gave birth to him but, to me, he's seems like he's been around much longer than 24 years. He is truly a man of the world," Whelihan adds.
As a kid, he was a risk taker in his lab, once creating a small explosion in the bedroom microwave he used to create his arms, she recalls. (His father sprinted in with a fire extinguisher but there was no damage.)
His mother recalls still another moment that perfectly captured his audacious spirit: On a trip to South Africa at 17, LaChappelle bungee jumped from the country's tallest bridge, arms spread and smiling all the way down. That fearless spirit now surges through his creations, she says.
"His whole journey has just been remarkable. He is a catalyst for change, a visionary," Whelihan says. "I don't think that comes along all that often. But Easton has definitely been graced with that."
Yet beyond his big dreams, the distant memory of that little girl at the Colorado science fair still occupies a part of his mind. It was a moment that "set my world upside down," he recalls. But he never got her name or her parents' names. He doesn't know what became of her. She now would be 15.
Eight years later, he still hopes that an article, video or TV program describing Unlimited Tomorrow's mission might reconnect them.
Until then, what started as a single, random collision at a science fair, LaChappelle says, continues to fuel the trajectory of his mission to change an industry for the better of the people.
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