> Myself and a colleague have been asked to do some research on
> the development of an electronic device to aid visually impaired
> horse riders in riding a dressage event. I decided to ask here
> because of the technical interest of the project and because of the
> knowledgeable and experienced audience.
>
> A rider and horse perform in an arena of 20 x 40 or 20 x 60m size.
> Rules allow for a human caller to call instructions, and for human
> markers to call out a letter indicating a position on the perimiter. We
> envisage that an electronic system could replace each of the
> human markers and be controlled by the caller. Each electronic
> device would beep, bleep or speak appropriately for it's position
> when commanded to. Lot's of potential here for some really cool
> PIC stuff: recorded voice, wireless data comms, etc.
>
> Firstly we are interested in finding out whatever we can about any
> existing systems. If it's already been done then there may be no
> need to develop anything else, but so far we haven't been able to
> find anything. If anyone out there has any pointers to such
> equipment or similar we would be grateful.


Rules, being what they are, may not allow it, but it seems to me that GPS
(carried by the rider) could do quite a good job here if permitted.
Certainly differential GPS would be excellent but even standard accuracy
could be adequate.
If you used GPS for gross position and then added some device that gave you
proximity to the nearest boundary device you could use the GPS to work out
gross position and sentinel to refine it. The whole could be fed audibly to
the user either on request or as a continuous stream.


        Russell McMahon

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