Zac Vawter climbs 103 floors of Chicago’s Willis Tower with bionic leg

On Sunday, November 4, Zac Vawter, 31, became the first person to ever climb 103 floors of Chicago's iconic Willis Tower wearing a bionic prosthetic limb.

He finished the climb in about 45 minutes.

Vawter, who lost his right leg in a motorcycle accident, wore a mind-controlled motorized prosthetic leg "designed to respond to electrical impulses from muscles in his hamstring" for the record-breaking climb the Associated Press reports.

"The hardware is amazing, it's there, it is something exciting and fun and I hope we push the boundaries of the research and the leg are capable of," Vawter told CNN.

Watch Vawter in training below:

"Tiny blue lights blinked beneath Vawter's white shorts, and as the leg moved, it made a crunching sound that brought to mind the movie superhero Iron Man," the Chicago Sun-Times describes the bionic leg in action.

Nearly 3,000 climbers participated in SkyRise Chicago, the annual charity event to raise money for the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. The institute used Vawter's climb as a research project.

"A lot of people say that losing a leg is like losing a loved one," said Vawter. "You go through a grieving process. You and establish a new normal in your life and move on. Today was a big event. It's just neat to be a part of the research and be a part of RIC."

"We were testing the leg under extreme conditions. Very few patients who will use the leg in the future will be using it for this purpose. From that perspective, its performance was beyond measure," Joanne Smith, CEO of the Rehabilitation Institute, told the Associated Press.

Vawter will leave behind the experimental leg in Chicago when he returns home to his wife and children in Yelm, Washington.