A training monitoring tool that improves performance and welfare in harness racing horses

Purpose and goal:

The project goal is to deliver a well-planned training and racing tool, resulting in a better and more sustainable career of horses involved in harness racing and training. To achieve this end goal, the specific R&D objectives are to build: the platform, the algorithms, the apps and the connected services for longitudinal monitoring of horses. By providing an advanced and user friendly training and monitoring platform, the evolution over time of all key parameters related to performance and health condition can be revealed, in the quest for finding the optimal balance between the two.

Expected results and effects:

There is a huge market opportunity in the harness racing industry, one of the very few competitions that remained open during the COVID-19 outbreak. We can provide a system beyond current state-of-the-art, which will help to optimize the training regime and breed the future champions; while at the same time improving welfare by preventing overuse training injuries and making early detection of horses with possible lesions that should not be training or racing.

Approach and implementation:

At the end of month 6, we will have a map for the commercial exploitation strategy. Afterwards, we will re-evaluate the project results versus the market and refine the strategy every six month during the project runtime. At the end of the project, we will have the integrated prototype system developed and validated at TRL 6.

The final milestone MS5 will also mark the final exploitation strategy, including the detailed business plan, and the IPR management strategy and protection, (joint) ownership, and licensing agreements. After the project end the results will be commercialized.