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Main Authors: Thorpe, Lachlan, Bawden, Lewis, Vendal, Karanjot, Bronskill, John, Turner, Richard E.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.12977
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author Thorpe, Lachlan
Bawden, Lewis
Vendal, Karanjot
Bronskill, John
Turner, Richard E.
author_facet Thorpe, Lachlan
Bawden, Lewis
Vendal, Karanjot
Bronskill, John
Turner, Richard E.
contents We present a transformer decoder based sports simulation engine, SportsNGEN, trained on sports player and ball tracking sequences, that is capable of generating sustained gameplay and accurately mimicking the decision making of real players. By training on a large database of professional tennis tracking data, we demonstrate that simulations produced by SportsNGEN can be used to predict the outcomes of rallies, determine the best shot choices at any point, and evaluate counterfactual or what if scenarios to inform coaching decisions and elevate broadcast coverage. By combining the generated simulations with a shot classifier and logic to start and end rallies, the system is capable of simulating an entire tennis match. We evaluate SportsNGEN by comparing statistics of the simulations with those of real matches between the same players. We show that the model output sampling parameters are crucial to simulation realism and that SportsNGEN is probabilistically well-calibrated to real data. In addition, a generic version of SportsNGEN can be customized to a specific player by fine-tuning on the subset of match data that includes that player. Finally, we show qualitative results indicating the same approach works for football.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_12977
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SportsNGEN: Sustained Generation of Realistic Multi-player Sports Gameplay
Thorpe, Lachlan
Bawden, Lewis
Vendal, Karanjot
Bronskill, John
Turner, Richard E.
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
Image and Video Processing
Applications
We present a transformer decoder based sports simulation engine, SportsNGEN, trained on sports player and ball tracking sequences, that is capable of generating sustained gameplay and accurately mimicking the decision making of real players. By training on a large database of professional tennis tracking data, we demonstrate that simulations produced by SportsNGEN can be used to predict the outcomes of rallies, determine the best shot choices at any point, and evaluate counterfactual or what if scenarios to inform coaching decisions and elevate broadcast coverage. By combining the generated simulations with a shot classifier and logic to start and end rallies, the system is capable of simulating an entire tennis match. We evaluate SportsNGEN by comparing statistics of the simulations with those of real matches between the same players. We show that the model output sampling parameters are crucial to simulation realism and that SportsNGEN is probabilistically well-calibrated to real data. In addition, a generic version of SportsNGEN can be customized to a specific player by fine-tuning on the subset of match data that includes that player. Finally, we show qualitative results indicating the same approach works for football.
title SportsNGEN: Sustained Generation of Realistic Multi-player Sports Gameplay
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
Image and Video Processing
Applications
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.12977