VIRTUAL REALITY PENALTY SHOT SIMULATION FOR GOALIES
A virtual training platform for soccer goalies.
Branching out from his work on the PITCHvr platform, Dr. Mark Jupina is working with Villanova students on a similar training simulation for soccer goalkeepers. The project is motivated by the low penalty-kick save rate across all levels of soccer, and the intent is to increase both the confidence and reaction time of goalkeepers using the VR training environment. Dr. Jupina worked with a senior capstone design team to build the platform, which incorporates the advanced physics of a kicked soccer ball by calculating the trajectory of its motion. As seen from the image above, the user’s goalkeeper avatar appears as a set of gloves that the goalkeeper directs, facing the penalty kicker in the distance.
In the first phase of the project, the ECE ’23 capstone team integrated the virtual assets, kicker animations, ball physics and user interactions using the Unreal Engine (UE) 5 Platform. The training application runs on the Meta Quest 2 headset, which is tethered by a video link cable to an HP OMEN 45L. The beta version of the system recognizes saves versus misses for physics-accurate shots in real time.
RESEARCHERS
Principal Investigator
Mark A. Jupina
Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Students
Phase 1: ECE ’23 team: Nicholas Alviggi, Theodore Andonyadis, Owen Saad and Brandon Syto
Phase 2: ECE ’24 team: Jacob Janavel, Nicholas Mollica, Sarah Pampalone and Nick Sofianakos
Partners
Villanova University Soccer and Philadelphia Union Academy
PROJECT DETAILS
For the next phase of development, the ECE ’24 capstone team will create an untethered version of the goalie training system for the Quest headset and integrate hand-tracking features to create controls and ball-deflection physics for the avatar’s/goalie’s hands.
Version 2.0 will further enhance the realism of the training environment through the modeling of a greater variety of penalty shots with left-footed kickers and the inclusion of ground shots.
The ECE ’24 team will incorporate feedback from coaches and goalies from Villanova Soccer and the Philadelphia Union Academy in refining the system performance.
