Ok - so the critical sub systems for keeping balance, headings etc, are probably best served by a RISC type processor like the ARM and ATMega processors. But on top of that, you could put something that allows an easy access to image processing, communication, logging etc.. In the USAV project I use an Android phone (ARM 600 mHz) to handle the more high level stuff - such as navigation, telemetry, Twitter integration etc... Even though this system is remarkable fast when doing just that (a distance + heading calculation takes roughly 2 milliseconds), this system will be affected once starting to do image processing etc...
I just stumbled across this little thing, that surely would be more powerful and extendable.It has an 1.6 GHz atom processor and uses only roughly 4 watts. You can run any operating system on it and connect usb devices.
The size is only 3.50 x 2.36 x 0.63 inches (89 x 60 x 16mm) which would make it fit in many UAV's.
http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Toradex-Xiilun-PC-and-Topaz-SBC/
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Their fastest product, the Apalis T30, is equivalent to 6 raspberry pi's on a single slightly smaller board, & a lot less money per clockcycle.
++ on the Adapteva. Why be an inchworm when you can step across mountaintops? No offense @Jesper--your bot is way cool. But for this guy I would ditch the old set top box rig & use Go on Plan9.
In the meantime, much of the Intel/Willows Garage vision libs are ported to GPUs--5-100x speed up.
Very interesting - they mention credit card sized once fully developed.
The board in the video is definitely too large, so lets hope! :)
How about this: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adapteva/parallella-a-supercomp...
@Angelo: Ooops! Embarrassing! :-)
1.6 mHz is 1.6 milliHertz. :-) 1.6GHz is probably correct
The day is certainly coming that we'll no longer use microcontrollers, but rather, microcomputers. Pretty exciting!