The Curling Game

Posted by Will Campbell, March 2, 2018

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Will‘s pick this week is The Curling Game by Corey Lagunowich.

The Winter Olympics may be over, but for some of us, a thirst for curling is never truly sated. Well I have good news for those of you who feel that way. You can continue to enjoy the thrill of curling in MATLAB. (The actual game looks nicer. I had to shrink the image down.)

From the MATLAB command window, you run curling.m to launch the UI. As the file’s page explains, you then begin to slide stones down the sheet with a variable amount of force and spin. As the stone moves towards the teeline, you can sweep the ice to alter the trajectory. Check out the demonstration:

What Corey fails to mention is that the physics for the game are simulated with a rather sophisticated Simulink model. The model accounts for friction, stone collisions, the effects of sweeping on velocity and spin, etc. Check out the model’s hierarchy to get of a sense of it.