Hark Solutions Ltd

Racewood is a specialist company that provides riding simulators for jockey training, fitness and leisure purposes. They have unique knowledge in how to create realistic horse motions through a mechanical means and ship their products around the world to horse lovers and equine training centres. The horses they produce are fully motorised and can simulate a walk, trot, canter and gallop as well as being equipped with a whole range of sensors to provide complete control by the rider.

Actually linking the mechanical horse to a computer based 3D environment presented some serious programming and engineering challenges. The simulation itself would require realistic horse movement, interaction with the environment would also be necessary and how to analyse the sensory data coming in from the horse and feed back instruction for motor control.

The result is probably the worlds first and only interactive dressage simulator that allows the rider to practise riding dressage in a safe controlled environment. The simulator also uses British Dressage standard tests with marking and complete replay facilities from multiple viewing angles. Showcased at the badminton horse trials it attracted lots of attention.

Since then we have continued working with Racewood supporting the further development of their products. We have been involved with the production of a horse racing training simulator used in the training of race jockeys. This has generated articles in the national papers, has featured in channel 4 racing and is currently in use by the British Racing School. More recently we have revisited the dressage simulator to bring even higher levels of sophistication. As for the future, “Eventing” has been mentioned…

 
Winning Newbury jockey wins
again on mechanical horse.