Copyright © Françoise Herrmann
The OMNI system, connecting wheelchairs to escooters for a fun motorized experience, is the brilliant 2023 winner of the Presidential Award, at France’s famous historical innovation contest, the Concours Lépine (since 1901). The OMNI escooter-wheelchair connection device is an easy and affordable way of hitching manual wheelchairs to escooters, making it possible for wheelchair users to zip around motorized, at up to 20 miles per hour, using equipment from the abled world. Wheelchair visionaries are even eagerly anticipating a Zip-escooter rental system, enabling wheelchair users to rent wheelchair-adapted-escooters, and to pay-as-you-go. An inclusive experience, considering that it takes less than five seconds for the OMNI system to bring wheelchairs and escooters together, with the promise of fun, escooter-enabled, mobility.
In the interim, OMNI also created the OMNITrott’ an adapted escooter (with a lower, angled handlebar) for $1000 Euros (approximately $1000 dollars) to connect to any wheelchair, using the original OMNI connection invention, designed to connect a wheelchair to an escooter. A price tag that is still three to four times less than the price of a motorized wheelchair.
In a nutshell, once the OMNI connector is in place, it takes just one effortless pull to dock the wheelchair to an escooter. The escooter-motorized wheelchair then provides unmatched mobility to wheelchair users, who otherwise face insurmountable obstacles. Obstacles such as steps, uneven or cobblestone pavements, slopes, and just 3% of public transportation retrofitted for universal wheelchair access.
The Youtube video below captures Charlotte Alaux, co-founder of the OMNI system, herself a wheelchair user since the age of four, demonstrating the ease with which the OMNI system connects a wheelchair to an escooter. Alaux estimates that approximately 800,000 wheelchair users in France could benefit from the OMNI solution, and a total of 54 million wheelchair users worldwide. The video also shows parallel footage of wheelchair use. Footage with and without the OMNI system, motorizing a wheelchair using an escooter, to highlight the unsuspected difficulties of wheelchair mobility without motorization.
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