{"id":7299,"date":"2022-07-22T15:37:47","date_gmt":"2022-07-22T22:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/?p=7299"},"modified":"2022-09-29T22:44:29","modified_gmt":"2022-09-30T05:44:29","slug":"visitors-group-looks-to-beaver-boat-locker-to-drive-economic-impact-along-willamette-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/2022\/07\/22\/visitors-group-looks-to-beaver-boat-locker-to-drive-economic-impact-along-willamette-river\/","title":{"rendered":"Visitors Group Looks to Beaver Boat Locker to Drive Economic Impact Along Willamette River"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

CORVALLIS, Ore. \u2013 Paddlers who want to leave their boat on the riverbank in Independence and explore the historic town won\u2019t have to worry about their watercraft not being there when they return, thanks to the Oregon State University College of Engineering\u2019s Prototype Development Lab<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jonathan Cordisco, an OSU Honors College student who works in the lab, has developed a locker system for kayakers, canoeists and stand-up paddleboarders to secure their craft and gear if they want to go into town for a walk, a meal or to stay the night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis project highlights how OSU and its students are able to work with organizations in highly collaborative ways, in this case to achieve something that improves recreational activities and economic impact,\u201d said mechanical engineering researcher John Parmigiani, who directs the prototype lab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Beaver Boat Locker, which has one fixed end and one moveable end, with the boats placed in between, was installed Thursday, July 21, at Riverview Park and will be dedicated at a ceremony Monday, July 25.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The new amenity for river recreationists, similar in philosophy to the hiker\/biker pods that Oregon State Parks has installed at six campgrounds on the coast, came about after the Willamette Valley Visitors Association approached the prototype lab in fall 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDiscussing the outcomes of the boat locker project with the WVVA, it was determined that the best outcome with regard to the intellectual property was to publish it and not protect it, even though it probably could have been patented,\u201d Parmigiani said. \u201cUnlike some of our work where we don\u2019t divulge technical details about the innovation, this is one where it\u2019s in everyone\u2019s interest to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In partnership with the Oregon State Marine Board, Travel Oregon, Willamette Riverkeeper and multiple parks and recreation agencies, the visitors association was looking to help towns along the mainstem Willamette, one of the nation\u2019s first designated National Water Trails, benefit from river recreationists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWe were seeing lots of people on the river in 2020 and into the second year of the pandemic, and we were thinking, how do we find a way to drive economic impact into communities through paddlers,\u201d said Katie McFall, communications and program manager for the WVVA. \u201cThat\u2019s where the idea for the locker system came from. The intention is that other communities on the river will add locker systems too, and that this is something that will become more normalized.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cordisco, a graduate of Portland\u2019s Lincoln High School who just completed his fourth year of studying mechanical engineering at OSU, was a natural to lead the boat locker project, Parmigiani said, noting Cordisco\u2019s engineering and communications skills as well as his interest in recreation-related work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis was perfect for me,\u201d said Cordisco, a member of OSU\u2019s Sports Product Development Club. \u201cI\u2019m really interested in sports and the outdoors, and I enjoy working on products I see myself using. In high school I participated in a Portland State University innovation challenge where we worked in teams, and we designed a similar locker for bikes, so going into this project I had some experience with the complexities of the challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After a lot of rough sketching, refinement and computer-aided-design modeling, Cordisco and Parmigiani settled on a \u201csandwich\u201d design with one anchored end and one sliding, bracketed end, with the boat secured in the middle. Assembled on a concrete pad, the 15-foot-long, 2-foot-tall steel-built locker also features a storage compartment for lifejackets, paddles, coolers, etc. and is designed to be easily taken apart and warehoused for the winter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne requirement they had was they wanted to discourage long-term boat storage,\u201d Parmigiani said. \u201cThey didn\u2019t want locals to just leave their boats there all summer, so having part of the boat exposed to the elements was a desirable characteristic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The visitors association\u2019s checklist for the $10,000 project also included durability, versatility, ease and safety of use, and environmental friendliness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy goal is always the simplest design possible to complete the function,\u201d Cordisco said. \u201cThe fewer things to go wrong, the better. This is a piece of infrastructure that people will use \u2013 it needs to be robust and simple. There\u2019s already been interest from other cities \u2013 that\u2019s a good sign for the future of the project. We\u2019ll see how the locker in Independence goes, and we can use those findings to make design changes if needed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Prototype Development Lab traces its roots to 2004 when Parmigiani joined the OSU College of Engineering and began building contacts with regional companies so undergraduates could develop industrial prototypes as their senior capstone project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the lab took on increasingly large jobs, graduate students were added to the mix, and in 2019 Parimigiani changed the focus of the lab to include consumer products. Over the years the lab has worked with organizations including Oregon Tool (formerly Blount International), Boeing, Daimler Trucks North America, Precision Castparts, Lora DiCarlo and Benchmade Knife Company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By: Steve Lundeberg, News and Research Writer, Life at OSU<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This story was originally published<\/a> on July 21, 2022, by the Oregon State University Newsroom<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the OSU College of Engineering: The college is a global leader in health-related engineering, artificial intelligence, robotics, advanced manufacturing, clean water and energy, materials science, computing and resilient infrastructure. Among the nation\u2019s largest and most productive engineering programs, the college awards more bachelor\u2019s degrees in computer science than any other institution in the United States. The college ranks second nationally among land grant universities, and third among the nation\u2019s 94 public R1 universities, for percentage of tenured or tenure-track engineering faculty who are women.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CORVALLIS, Ore. \u2013 Paddlers who want to leave their boat on the riverbank in Independence and explore the historic town won\u2019t have to worry about their watercraft not being there when they return, thanks to the Oregon State University College of Engineering\u2019s Prototype Development Lab. Jonathan Cordisco, an OSU Honors College student who works in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11853,"featured_media":7321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1205,82,1049126,1048851,1306,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","category-features","category-homefeature","category-homestories","category-student","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11853"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7299"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7570,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7299\/revisions\/7570"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}