Abstract:
We develop a system for simulation-based optimization of defensive formations for American football. The first component of the system is an environment for simulating football plays with real physical interactions between players and their surroundings. The simulator is built on the AGEIA PhysX engine, which incorporates rigid body dynamics and collision detection. The simulator allows a user to design, visualize, and execute distinct plays for each offensive player. In addition, the camera angle and zoom can be adjusted to suit the user's needs. The second component of the system is a genetic algorithm that uses the simulator to optimize the defensive formation based on the offense's playbook and its likelihood of running each play. We show that this technique effectively tunes defenses to a variety of game situations.
