Google open-sources soccer reinforcement learning simulator

About a dozen members of the Google Brain team today open-sourced Google Research Football Environment, a 3D reinforcement learning simulator for training AI to master soccer. The environment can simulate soccer matches, including particular scenarios like corner and penalty kicks, goals, and offsides. The news comes today at the start of the Women’s World Cup starts in France and a day after Google introduced pricing and games for its Stadia cloud gaming service.

“Researchers can directly experience how the game works by playing against each other or by dueling their agents. The game can be controlled by means of both keyboards and gamepads. Moreover, replays of several rendering qualities can be automatically stored while training, so that it is easy to inspect the policies agents are learning,” researchers said in a paper that accompanies the package on GitHub.