Beginning at NYU in Jan 2013 within the context of a Patents Translation course delivered online, this blog seeks to uncover the patents that rock our daily lives....
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, designedto 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.
Simone is a best friend that fits in your
backpack. She is an ultra-portable and high-performance scooter, marketed as the “world’s most compact scooter”. Weighing just 3.5 kgs (7.7 lbs), and
measuring 13 x 8.2 x 3.3 inches, Simone is ready to use, or to stow, in no more than 15 seconds (see videos below). The Simoneinvention was scheduled for exhibit and award, this year, at the renowned Concours Lépine, an international fair and contest for patented inventions, held in
Paris every year, since 1901, had the Spring 2021 eventnot been postponed twice, due to pandemic restrictions
on social gatherings.
Easier to use,
lighter, and less cumbersome than a bicycle, Simone offers the additional advantages
of ultra-portability with an automatic folding/unfolding platform, in comparison to the existing state of the art
in foldable scooters. An existing state
of the art, where foldable scooters typically only fold against the full-length
of their steering post.
The abstract of this
invention, recited in English, in the WIPO patent, is included below, together
with the patent Figures 1 and 9, respectively depicting an
embodiment of the scooter fully deployed (Fig. 1) and completely folded (Fig.
9). Corresponding images of the elegant blue and grey marketed scooter are
also included.
Specifically, the
patent Figure 1 depicts the foldable scooter (100), in a state ready for use C1, comprising the steering post 10 with a handlebar 11,
two wheels (1a at the rear and 1b in the front), a platform 20,
connected to the steering post 10, via a connector 30. The
platform 20 further comprises a foldable upper plate 21, with two
telescopic parts 22a and 22b, able to slide and fit, in and out,
of each other. When the telescoping parts 22a and 22b are extended, the upper plate 21 is unfolded, and the platform 20 is able to support a user standing. When
the telescoping parts 22a and 22b are nested, the upper
plate 21 is folded, and the
foldable scooter becomes ready for stowing in a bag or elsewhere.
The upper plate 21
also comprises two plates 23 and 24 with distal ends (23a, 24a) and proximal
ends (23b, 24b), connected to a pivot system, perpendicular to the directional axis
A1 of the scooter 100, enabling the distal ends (23a, 24a) of the plates (23,
24) to pivot together when the telescoping parts (22a, 22b) of the upper plate
21 slide from a deployed position P1 to a nested position P2. The scooter 100
further comprises guidance means 50, enabling to guide the sliding of the two
telescopic parts (22a, 22b). The guidance means comprise at least one elongated
slot 52 and a guiding finger 51, traveling within the slot 52, when the telescopic
plates move from a deployed position to P1 to a nested position P2. Finally,
the steering post 10 of the deployed scooter comprises at least one male and
one female tube (18a, 18b,18c), able to slide one inside the other to reduce
the overall height of the steering post 10 when the scooter 100 is folded, in
the stowing state C2 .
The Figure 9 depicts
the scooter 100, folded in the stowing state C2, with the steering post tubes (18a,
18b, 18c) nested, the upper plate 21 completely folded, the platform 20 in the folded
position P2, the locking/unlocking mechanism 40 actuated by the rear wheel 1a.
The
present invention relates to a compact foldable kick scooter (100) comprising at least two wheels (1a, 1b) including one rear wheel (1a)
and one front wheel (1b), a steering
post (10) provided with handlebars (11) and connected to a platform (20) via the intermediary of a
connecting member (30), in which
said platform (20) comprises a
foldable upper plate (21) and at
least one first (22a) and one second
(22b) telescopic portions that serve
as a chassis (22) and are able to
slide with respect to one another to make it possible to pass from a deployed
position (P1), in which the upper
plate (21) is unfolded and serves to
receive the feet of a person, to a stowing position (P2), in which the upper plate (21)
is folded and the first (22a) and
second (22b) portions are nested at
least partially one inside the other for compactness, and vice versa.[AbstractWO2020008132A1]
The two YouTube videos below show the ease and speed with which the Simone scooter is respectively, deployed and folded—in less than 15 seconds.
