Detecting Equine Gaits Through Rider-Worn Accelerometers

Automatic horse gait classification offers insights into training intensity, but direct<br>sensor attachment to horses raises concerns about discomfort, behavioral disruption, and<br>entanglement risks. To address this, our study leverages rider-centric accelerometers for<br>moveme...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Jorn Schampheleer, Anniek Eerdekens, Wout Joseph, Luc Martens, Margot Deruyck
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2025-04-01
Series:Animals
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Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/15/8/1080
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Summary:Automatic horse gait classification offers insights into training intensity, but direct<br>sensor attachment to horses raises concerns about discomfort, behavioral disruption, and<br>entanglement risks. To address this, our study leverages rider-centric accelerometers for<br>movement classification. The position of a sensor, sampling frequency, and window size of<br>segmented signal data have a major impact on classification accuracy in activity recognition.<br>Yet, there are no studies that have evaluated the effect of all these factors simultaneously<br>using accelerometer data from four distinct rider locations (the knee, backbone, chest, and<br>arm) across five riders and seven horses performing three gaits. A total of eight models<br>were compared, and an LSTM-convolutional network (ConvLSTM2D) achieved the highest<br>accuracy, with an average accuracy of 89.72% considering four movements (halt, walk,<br>trot, and canter). The model performed best with an interval width of four seconds and<br>a sampling frequency of 25 Hz. Additionally, an F1-score of 86.18% was achieved and<br>validated using LOSOCV (Leave One Subject Out Cross-Validation).
ISSN:2076-2615