Easton LaChappelle, 17, began working with robotics when he was 14. He lives in Mancos, Colorado, and is challenging the future of prosthetics and tele-robotics. His long-term goal is to create an affordable upper-limb prosthesis that is neural controlled and stronger than a human. He has two 3D printers in his room where he makes all the joints, gears and custom parts needed for a robotic limb. He has been featured in Popular Science and Popular Mechanics magazines. Recently the President of the United States shook hands with the arm as part of the White House Science Fair. He has worked on NASA’s Robonaut project at Johnson Space Centre and he placed 2nd in the world in engineering at the 2012 International Science Fair.

Easton LaChappelle’s story offers a reminder of the simplest key to success; if you want something badly enough, do the work and find creative ways to achieve your desired outcome. ( A good broadband connection helps…)

LaChappelle’s mission is to reinvent conventional prostheses. After meeting a young girl with a prosthetic arm and realizing that her parents had to pay $80,000 for it, he knew something had to change. So LaChappelle focused the desire he’s always had to take things apart and put them back together again in a new way.

Living in a small town in Colorado, LaChappelle has had to self-teach himself everything–electronics, coding, how to use a 3-D printer, the list goes on. “This year’s graduating class had 23 people. The nearest RadioShack is an hour away,” LaChappelle says. But lack of access and the learning curve hasn’t stopped him. Neither has the fact that’s he’s 17 and has little money to buy products. LaChappelle conducts all of his work in his bedroom. “Just the other day, I heated acetone in a mason jar in my room to make the 3-D-printed hands look more human,” he admitted to an audience of thousands in his recent TEDx talk.