Easton LaChappelle started his inventor career as a tinkering teenager, who eventually made a robotic arm from items lying around the house. Direction for his work came when he met a girl at a science fair who had a conventional prosthetic arm – typically costing £50,000, it weighed a couple of kilos and took up to a year to fabricate. Now 26 years old, LaChappelle is the CEO and founder of Unlimited Tomorrow, a company with a mission to make affordable, lightweight, high-quality prostheses for, initially, children, but increasingly for adults as well.
Unlimited Tomorrow’s business model focuses on remote care, which means a prosthesis – TrueLimb – can be ordered from the comfort of one’s own home. The process starts with a 3D scan: Unlimited Tomorrow sends its customers a scan app that can be installed on a mobile device. A family member or friend then scans the person’s residual limb. During the ordering process the person also selects the colour for...