Versatile physical and behavioral features as well as their exploitation through computation-power onboard the robot-players are feasible and necessary goals for the RoboCup small robots league. We substantiate this claim in this paper by classifying di.erent approaches and by discussing their potentials and limitations for research on AI and robotics. Furthermore, we present the most recent results of our approach to these goals in form of the so-called CubeSystem, a kind of construction-kit for robots and other autonomous systems. It is based on a very compact embedded computer, the so-called RoboCube, a set of sensor- and motor-modules, and software support in form of a special operating system and highlevel languages.