Related papers: The Socceral Force
Invasion team sports such as soccer produce a high-dimensional, strongly coupled state space as many players continuously interact on a shared field, challenging quantitative tactical analysis. Traditional rule-based analyses are intuitive,…
This paper aims to reduce randomness in football by analysing the role of lineups in final scores using machine learning prediction models we have developed. Football clubs invest millions of dollars on lineups and knowing how individual…
Physically-realistic simulated environments are powerful platforms for enabling measurable, replicable and statistically-robust investigation of complex robotic systems. Such environments are epitomised by the RoboCup simulation leagues,…
Few multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) research on Google Research Football (GRF) focus on the 11v11 multi-agent full-game scenario and to the best of our knowledge, no open benchmark on this scenario has been released to the public.…
Recent video+language datasets cover domains where the interaction is highly structured, such as instructional videos, or where the interaction is scripted, such as TV shows. Both of these properties can lead to spurious cues to be…
This paper presents a new framework for player valuation in European football, by fusing principles from financial mathematics and network theory. The valuation model leverages a "passing matrix" to encapsulate player interactions on the…
Robot soccer, in its full complexity, poses an unsolved research challenge. Current solutions heavily rely on engineered heuristic strategies, which lack robustness and adaptability. Deep reinforcement learning has gained significant…
This paper explores how semantic-space reasoning, traditionally used in computational linguistics, can be extended to tactical decision-making in team sports. Building on the analogy between texts and teams -- where players act as words and…
We consider the task of determining the number of chances a soccer team creates, along with the composite nature of each chance-the players involved and the locations on the pitch of the assist and the chance. We propose an interpretable…
Even though Google Research Football (GRF) was initially benchmarked and studied as a single-agent environment in its original paper, recent years have witnessed an increasing focus on its multi-agent nature by researchers utilizing it as a…
This article describes the design and development of robotic prototypes for robotic soccer competitions using Dynamixel motors. Although the prototypes are not aimed at world-class competitions, they represent a significant step in the…
Soccer is a globally popular sporting event, typically characterized by long matches and distinctive highlight moments. Recent advances in Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) offer promising capabilities in temporal grounding and video…
The Video Assistant Referee (VAR) has revolutionized association football, enabling referees to review incidents on the pitch, make informed decisions, and ensure fairness. However, due to the lack of referees in many countries and the high…
The IEEE Very Small Size Soccer (VSSS) is a robot soccer competition in which two teams of three small robots play against each other. Traditionally, a deterministic coach agent will choose the most suitable strategy and formation for each…
While several high profile video games have served as testbeds for Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL), this technique has rarely been employed by the game industry for crafting authentic AI behaviors. Previous research focuses on training…
Vision Language Models (VLMs) have demonstrated strong performance in multi-modal tasks by effectively aligning visual and textual representations. However, most video understanding VLM research has been domain-agnostic, leaving the…
Evaluating a soccer player's performance can be challenging due to the high costs and small margins involved in recruitment decisions. Raw observational statistics further complicate an accurate individual skill assessment as they do not…
RoboCup Soccer Simulation 2D (SS2D) research is hampered by the complexity of existing Cpp-based codes like Helios, Cyrus, and Gliders, which also suffer from limited integration with modern machine learning frameworks. This development…
The availability of massive data about sports activities offers nowadays the opportunity to quantify the relation between performance and success. In this study, we analyze more than 6,000 games and 10 million events in six European leagues…
Fantasy football is a billion-dollar industry with millions of participants. Under a fixed budget, managers select squads to maximize future Fantasy Premier League (FPL) points. This study formulates lineup selection as data-driven…