• CES La Vegas 2023 is held from Thursday to Sunday.

    This show is the best-known global event in the new technologies sector, an opportunity for companies and start-ups to present their innovations.

  • One of the Hauts-de-France companies that will be heading to the United States is Atmos Gear, which designs electric rollerblades.

  • This innovation, a world first, was born in the head of its designer while watching a manga when he was a teenager.

From a childhood dream to a world premiere.

It is an unusual entrepreneurial story that will lead Mohamed Soliman, 25, to present his invention at CES in Las Vegas in early January.

His very young company, Atmos Gear, designed and produced the world's first model of electric rollerblades.

From a crazy idea, born in the head of a 13-year-old teenager, to the successful marketable version, it is a real life journey that surrounds this innovation.

Who hasn't dreamed of flying on a Star Wars ship or riding Marty McFly's hoverboard?

Dreams that get lost in the face of an implacable reality: these objects do not exist.

If ordinary mortals have a reason, not Mohamed Soliman: “I was 13 when I watched the

Air Gear

manga .

The characters had electric rollerblades.

I absolutely wanted the same ones, but they didn't exist.

The teenager therefore contented himself with normal skates while waiting for a manufacturer to release an electric model.

"This idea never left me, and since no one got started, I told myself that I was going to do it myself," he continues.

He becomes an engineer to realize his idea

But we do not design this type of object with pieces of wood in a garage.

Pragmatic, Mohamed Soliman therefore looked for the training that would allow him to realize his dream: “I joined the mechatronics engineering course at UTC Compiègne.

This is where I was finally able to change dimension by going from simple sketches to real prototypes.

The manga's favorite object took shape for the first time in 2018 and Mohamed loved being his own beta tester, despite the falls.

The first models were on two wheels, with the batteries integrated into the rollers.

"Too heavy, it didn't fit", even if they looked like two drops of water to the roller skates of the manga.

So as a good engineer, he overhauled the concept.

“It took three years of R&D to arrive at a reliable system,” admits the entrepreneur.

Result, a three-wheeled skate with the motor integrated into the central wheel, "the smallest and most powerful in the world", welcomes Mohamed Soliman.

The battery, which provides a range of 20 km, and the electronic controller have left the plate to be housed in a small bag to be worn around the waist.

The advantage is that the skates can be used with the same ease with or without assistance.

Like electric skateboards, roller skates are controlled using a hand-held remote control that allows you to accelerate, brake and see the battery level.

Atmos Gear will also offer, in a second step, an intelligent assistance mode based on the movements of the skater.

Our CES Las Vegas file

Atmos Gear's innovation is primarily aimed at the already well-stocked market of rollerbladers.

“We are focusing on this for 2023. I think the target will naturally widen thereafter, when people will see the product in use,” says the entrepreneur.

If it is still waiting to find its audience, the young man's invention is already attracting covetousness: “They are starting to copy us, that is why we have to broaden our horizons beyond the French market.

The CES will also serve to say internationally that we were the first.

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  • high tech

  • CES 2023

  • Innovation

  • start-up

  • Mobility

  • Hauts-de-France