Here’s another concept for Broken Horizon – a dragon pilot saddle! Ft. Alex as the model (and Riptide as the pilot, even if you can’t see his face)
Modern saddles were jointly developed by dragons and humans post-war to make dragon riding safer and flying more precise, as regular reins and voice commands quickly became obsolete.
In these saddles the control sticks on the pilot’s seat transmit inputs to the steering modules, which are then interpreted into nerve impulses for the dragon to follow. However they are not hard commands, and the dragon can still choose to ignore the impulses for any reason. This means that the dragon and the pilot must have an incredibly strong trust bond for the best performance.