♪
I started out by myself, right?
Growing up in a small town and, you know,
when I first started getting into this,
nobody understood what I was doing.
It's like, you know, they would be like,
"Yeah, it's cool," and everything,
but it never went beyond that.
♪
You know, I have this vision to put an arm on someone,
and I know it's possible.
It's just technology catching up to that vision.
♪
We are in Seattle, Washington.
I just flew in today, and, uh,
starting to work with, um,
a lead R&D manager, um,
that sees--oversees all the prototyping
to really utilize their new technologies
and a lot of their R&D resources to, uh,
make this custom prosthetic for a small girl named Momo
and then start creating a model
that's scalable across the world.
♪
It's always been, you know,
really building up to this moment
of how this will affect this little girl Momo
and how will that make her feel
and just the expression that she'll have
when she sees something that is truly hers,
that's not just a generic arm or hand,
it's--it's her hand.
This could be the next big jump in technology and prosthetics.
This is giving us the ability to make something
that looks exactly like a human hand
down to the feeling of skin and the fingers folding
exactly like how the human hand does.
♪
Uh, I've been here, like, four days now.
Today I had a really awesome experience.
I met with this guy named John
who oversees all of the manufacturing and production,
and had some really amazing conversations
about how can we take these prosthetics
and really make them as lifelike as possible.
We are currently in the Advanced Prototyping Center.
We're generating all the next gen prototypes
for anything that's hardware related at Microsoft.
It's different than what we normally do.
Uh, we don't usually build prosthetics here, right?
Uh, but every person wanted to have a part of it, really did.
What I was impressed with with Easton
is that he's looking at different--
different technologies, new technologies
that aren't--maybe aren't actually being used
together right now and how can he combine those
in a way to do something new.
To get it to be not just a functional prototype
but a really beautiful one is gonna take some work.
I know he's got a lot of heavy lifting ahead of him,
but I totally think it's solvable.
It's hard though.
♪
I think the next biggest challenge
is fitting a lot of the mechanics into this.
This is a really small space to fit everything in.
Um, but I think we can make it work.
♪
We're gonna fail, we fail fast.
You're gonna try something, it's not gonna work,
um, and that's okay.
Pivot, you know,
turn a little bit,
look at it a little bit differently
from a different angle and try again.
People that I--I've never even talked to or met before
are now, you know, wanting to help as much as they can
by staying, you know, after work
and--and, you know, allowing me
to pick their brain and use their expertise.
♪
I think he's close to getting his mechanicals right.
I think, uh, that's the internal part,
in kind of layman's term, the bones.
He's gotta figure out how to get the bones right,
he's getting the tendons right,
and that's gonna be difficult.
♪
The whole thing's pretty shocking, actually.
It's, um, pretty overwhelming
how a little girl from Florida
is connected with a young man
from Durango, Colorado,
who is somehow connected with Microsoft,
which all involves helping Momo get her dream arm.
How does that happen?
Miracle.
I'm very excited though.
♪
I mean, you don't go to Seattle every day.
♪
How 'bout do you get a new arm every day?
-Nope! -How 'bout one
with fingers that move?
Nope.
That's really a dream, isn't it?
Yeah.
You know, working with John and Jeremy,
we were up until 2:00 in the morning on Sunday
and today is Monday, so, you know,
we--we didn't know what would happen.
It's not just me working.
It--there's teams of people that make this what it is.
By doing good, good follows.
And, you know, by trying to help people,
other people will try and help you.
♪
(laughter)
-Hi. -Hi.
Oh my gosh.
-Hi, Momo. -Hi!
Oh, it's so good to finally meet you.
-Sandy? -I'm Sandy.
Ah, it's been such a long time coming.
It sure has.
It's so great to meet you.
Awesome, well,
I have something very cool
to show you guys.
You ready?
No!
(laughter)
♪
(Sandy gasps)
-Oh, wow. -Cool!
Oh, wow.
♪
We even made some fingernails for you
so you can, like, paint it
and do all sorts of different stuff.
Cool!
♪
And you--you can move the fingers too, so...
♪
(applause)
♪
It was a little surprising for me too
that all this large amount of people
were working on this arm just for me,
because not everyone in the whole entire world
gets an arm like this every day.
This is John.
He's been helping me a ton.
He's, uh, he runs the Advanced Prototyping...
♪
Uh, this is all about the team.
Uh, the team came together and--and made this, uh,
something amazing.
I mean, I...
Giving somebody an arm
that they didn't have before,
I mean, it opens up
all kinds of new possibilities.
I'm excited to see what she does with it, really.
♪
Today has changed my life,
not just for me but for everyone missing a limb.
When one gets it, then a couple others,
then maybe hundreds and thousands.
So no one feels left out.
♪