Design and Evaluation of a Novel Haptic Interface for Horse-Drawn Carriage Simulation

Animal welfare has become an increasingly important concern in the sports field. Learning horse-drawn carriage driving requires much time and effort for both the drivers and the horses because the associated gestures to avoid harming the horses are difficult to acquire. This raises the need to develop realistic simulation environments for future drivers. To this end, two haptic interface prototypes were designed, coupled with dedicated simulation software. The first was developed based on a SPIDAR haptic device and implemented simple behaviors of the carriage. A user study demonstrated interest in such a simulator, which led to the design of a second prototype, on a different architecture than the first prototype, for integrating more precise laws of horse behavior such as mood and allowing a more subtle control of forces. An evaluation with driving learners revealed that the simulator was capable of not only producing sensations close to reality but also improving the interaction between the trainer and the learner.