It’s only a matter of time before 19-year-old whiz kid and inventor Easton LaChappelle is a household name. At 14, he taught himself how to design a robotic hand out of Legos, fishing line, and servo motors. After learning about how insanely expensive prosthetics were — we’re talking tens of thousands of dollars, here — LaChappelle set out to create a cheaper alternative.
By 17, he had found a way to 3D print a brain-powered prosthetic arm for just $250 and presented it to President Obama. Because he’s such a champ, he even released the designs and software for his robotic arm on open source where anyone can access them for free. Oh, and did we mention that he also has a TED Talk and works with NASA? Yeah.
Below is a video profiling LaChappelle, put out by our brothers-in-arms at Uproxx. It’s the first in a new web series they’ve launched, sponsored by HP, called Luminaries. It profiles…well, luminaries. Go watch it and reminisce about how unproductive your teenage years were.
