According to a 2017 study, the rhythmic, three-dimensional movement of horseback riding intervention can help boost strength, balance and other skills for both children and adults who have a range of physical and developmental disabilities. While such activity might be a welcome alternative or supplement to other therapies, some people might have difficulty actually finding a horse they can ride.
A group of Rice University students has made it their goal to make hippotherapy—equine-assisted therapy—a reality for people who don’t have access to a horse. In a recent press release, the students unveiled their steed, Stewie, a robotic horse designed as a therapy aid for people with either neurological or movement disorders or balance problems who could gain physical and mental benefits from hippotherapy.
The project was started two years ago by another team of students. The current team has taken those early concepts and built upon them to make the horse more comfortable and offer riders more control. They based Stewie on a 1950s robotic concept, Gough-Stewart Platform, an octahedral hexapod. The team used six computer-controlled motors attached to aluminum legs to allow for six degrees of saddle movement: latitude, longitude, vertical, pitch, roll and yaw. Click on the video below to see Stewie in action.
“It’s similar to what you would see on flight simulators at NASA,” said student Wesley Yee.
Since the precision motors could be manipulated by a computer in any combination at any time, the students were able to fine-tune the saddle’s movements to match those made by actual horses. They worked with the Panther Creek Inspiration Ranch, a nonprofit facility in Spring, Tex., that offers equine-assisted therapy, to collect data with an accelerometer app on their smartphones.
“We taped the phone to the back of a saddle on a horse, and they took the horse around,” said student Kelsi Wicker. “We were able to take all of the data at the same time.”
The data was than incorporated into their code and loaded into a control panel that patients and their therapists could use to select a horse—named after the actual horse that was used to collect the data—and control a session’s length.
The students’ project earned them the Excellence in Capstone Engineering Design Award and a prize of $1,000 at the annual George R. Brown School of Engineering 2018 Design Showcase on April 12, and the team has been selected to compete at the World Congress of Biomechanics in Dublin, Ireland, on July 8-12.
Although the project will end when the students graduate, the team hopes others will keep the idea alive and further improve upon it. The project’s schematics and code are open source and will be available online and free to anyone who wants to replicate or improve upon their design.