Gary Woods, Linus Shih, Leah Chong, Chandler Burke, George Zhu, Sihan Zeng, Paul Byrnes
Hippotherapy is the use of horseback riding to improve the coordination, balance, and core strength of patients with autism, cerebral palsy, and other disorders. Unfortunately, hippotherapy is inaccessible to many patients because of its high price per session and the remote location of therapy centers. To provide an affordable, readily available alternative to patients, we have built a mechanical hippotherapy device that simulates the motion of a horse and the experience of controlling a horse. Our design includes a realistic back, a working rein mechanism, and a moving head to make using our device feel like riding a horse. Our device also performs two different horse gaits, walk and trot, to closely approximate the motion of a real horse. In addition, we have installed a variety of safety features, such as emergency stop mechanisms and a harness, to make our device safe, and a touchscreen to make our device easy to use. We envision our product to be used both in clinical and residential settings to make hippotherapy available to a wider range of patients.