Portable pushchair OmniO Rider wins Gadget Show Live British Inventors’ Award

Tech Digest was at The Gadget Show Live at the NEC in Birmingham today. There were shedloads of interesting products there, mostly from smaller, more innovative companies rather than the bigger names you get at international shows like IFA in Berlin and CES in Las Vegas.

One of the most interesting products around is the  ‘OmniO Rider’ which won Gadget Show Live’s British Inventors’ Award, presented by one of the TV show’s host Jason Bradbury. It’s a lightweight 5Kg pushchair that can quickly transform to a compact backpack for easy transportation. Designed specifically for parents who ‘always seem to have their hands full’, the stroller is one of the lightest on the market and has a carrying weight of 25Kg for kids as old as 5.

Also recognised were runners up Cycloc ‘Hero’, a simple and discreet storage solution for bikes, which allows users to hang their cycles on the wall using one pedal, and Kino-mo, a transparent display that creates the effect of content floating in 3D in the air.Last year’s runner-up Edward Ward, the brains behind Veglo, a revolution in cycling safety lighting, has seen his business going from strength-to-strength after being part of the competition: “The British Inventors’ Project was just the beginning,” says Edward. “After being knocked off my bike I developed our Commuter X4 as I believed it could save lives, we launched a Kickstarter fundraising campaign alongside entering the competition and it all just took off! Since last year’s event we have now been fully funded, are stocked on Wiggle.com, have sold 7,000 units and are launching three new products this year.”The OmniO Rider team wins £1,000 to develop their product further, a commercial stand at Gadget Show Live 2016 and three years free access to Autodesk’s product design software Fusion 360 Ultimate.