TheGlobeTrotter is a mounting system that allows any wheelchair to be motorized at low cost, thereby improving the mobility of people with motor disabilities.
The genesis of the project
Robin Lhommeau ( Arts et Métiers graduate), Sulivan Richard, Mathieu Izaute, and Noé Vinot-Kahn, all four engineers, met at the d.school Paris, a user-centered innovation school. Together, they worked on the topic of "improving mobility for people with motor disabilities." After talking to many people with motor disabilities, including Charlotte Alaux (who has been in a wheelchair since the age of 4), to understand their needs and testing several options, they decided to create a mounting system for electric scooters.
The people we met motivated us to keep going!
Once they finished their year at the d.school, they created Omni in 2018, with Charlotte Alaux, using theArts et Métiers incubatorArts et Métiers the Paris campus.
An innovative, inclusive, and accessible solution
After two years of developing more than 50 prototypes to ensure that the attachment was suitable to as many scooters and wheelchairs as possible, and hundreds of hours of testing to ensure user safety, the GlobeTrotter was born!
What is the advantage of GlobeTrotter over existing medical solutions? It is accessible to as many people as possible thanks to its low cost: €590 (plus the purchase price of the electric scooter) compared to a minimum of €5,000 for a conventional motorization! In addition, it was important for the founders of Omni to use an object (the electric scooter) from the world of able-bodied people in order to limit the stigma associated with disability.
Omni won the 2019 HandiTecAM Award, which recognizes a technical project that facilitates, improves, or enriches the lives of people with disabilities, and received support from the Arts et Métiers Foundation Arts et Métiers the form Arts et Métiers a €40,000 honor loan.
Being incubated at Arts et Métiers other hardware startups allowed us to evolve in the right environment to develop this product, says Robin Lhommeau.
What now?
After several patents filed and a pre-production run completed this summer, the GlobeTrotter is now on sale! Over 150 pre-orders have already been placed and will be delivered in March.
The goal for 2021? To equip 1,000 people with this device!
A fundraising campaign is planned for mid-2021 via business angel channels , investment funds, and family offices. Anyone wishing to contribute to this project is welcome!
