One
winter morning in 1992, a young man drowned when his snowmobile plunged through
the ice on a lake near John Weinel’s suburban Minneapolis home. Weinel remembers
his first reaction: “There should be an automatic flotation device for
snowmobiles.”
Weinel, a 1984 mechanical engineering graduate, was working for his family’s sign fabrication business at the time. He was in no position to act on his idea, so he filed the thought away for “someday” in the future. But as the years went by, Weinel, the father of six daughters, couldn't forget the tragedy that had struck that young man and his family.
Weinel learned that an estimated 50 people throughout the United States and Canada are killed in similar accidents each year and that the number of fatalities is increasing as the popularity of off-road ATVs rises. Finally, in summer 1999, Weinel decided that “someday” had arrived.
Resolved to translate his concept of snowmobile safety into reality, Weinel knew just where to turn for help. He contacted mechanical engineering professor Virgil Marple, who taught ME 4054, a hands-on class in which engineering students show what they’ve learned.
Officially known as Design Projects, “it’s the last class that seniors in mechanical engineering take [before graduation],” Weinel explained. Students in teams apply their skills to real-life problems posed by carefully chosen “industry advisors.”
By the end of the summer, the five students developing Weinel’s idea had created a working prototype of an inflatable flotation device that would—in theory, at least—deploy from the seat of a snowmobile in an emergency.
The students took their specially rigged snowmobile to Medicine Lake in Hennepin County for a test run. One daring volunteer agreed to “water skip” the craft into the distinctly unfrozen late-August waters. Two other students waited nearby in a rescue boat. After a suspense-filled moment, the system worked.
“It floated the snowmobile beneath the water and all three strapping students onto the surface,” Weinel said.
The combination of Weinel’s entrepreneurial flair and the students’ enthusiastic research provided a textbook example of the way academic/industrial partnerships should work. The Nebulus Emergency Flotation Device, as the students named it, is now being marketed as standard equipment for law enforcement agencies and fire departments as far away as Alaska.
“My goal is to get a Nebulus device in the trunk of every state patrol car,” Weinel said.
The ripcord version of the Nebulus has been in production for a year and a half. The target user for this model is a “first responder,” like a state patrol officer who is first on the scene of an accident but whose rescue efforts may be hampered by lack of technology.
“Typically the first responder is an officer on his belly lying on the ice with an outstretched stick, waiting for the rescue crew to arrive…. Now first responders can commandeer any snowmobile on the scene, attach the [Nebulus] device, and drive out across the ice to [the rescue],” Weinel said.
Another version of the Nebulus can be used by ultralight aircraft during an emergency landing over water.
Still in development is the automatic version, which Weinel hopes will become a standard safety feature in snowmobiles just as air bags are in automobiles. Also being tested is a model for use in avalanche rescues.
University students have been involved in every phase of the Nebulus’ development. Weinel estimates that since 1999 at least a dozen other student teams from ME 4054 have worked on various aspects of the device. After graduation, a few of those individuals have been hired to work for Weinel’s company, JTW Associates, in Lakeville, Minn. Others have forged relationships with the company as outside consultants.
Weinel said he has benefited greatly from his collaboration with the University.
“I owe everything to the University,” he said. “I’m a true Gopher.”
That’s not the only interaction with his alma mater that interests him, however. To put it plainly, Weinel wants to be an inspiration.
“I was a terrible, terrible engineering student,” he confessed. He hopes that his example of perseverance will motivate “all those guys sitting in the back row of class with nobody to tell them to keep trying.”
Weinel has another goal as well. “As soon as the Nebulus saves its first life, I’m going to call the parents [of the 1992 accident victim],” he said. “I want to tell them that their son did not die in vain.”
