CMDragons: Dynamic passing and strategy on a champion robot soccer team

After several years of developing multiple RoboCup small-size robot soccer teams, our CMDragons robot team achieved a highly successful level of performance, winning both the 2006 and 2007 competitions without losing a single game. Our small-size team consists of five executing wheeled robots with centralized, off-board perception and decision making. The decision making framework consists of a set of layered components, consisting of perception, evaluation and strategy, robot tactics and skills, and real-time navigation. In this paper, we present the strategy, action selection, and execution aspects of our architecture, with a focus on passing as an example of effective coordinated teamwork. The design enabled our robot team to score using multiple methods, from direct shooting up to 3D passes deflected in midair, resulting in a rich set of actions that were difficult for adversaries to counter. We provide several performance quantified claims supported by testing in our laboratory and in competition settings.