Motors_Micros
The future of robotics depends on the relationship between Microcontroller and Motor
Freescale (formely Motorola) has been making microcontrollers for many years, to see the wide variety of modules available see a interface board retailer (Technological Arts ), Freescale website or a mouser catalog for mass quantity prices. The features of the micrcontroller span a large range for simplicity with the C32 to overwhelming capabilities like the XD (freescale 9S12XDP512 page) . XDdistributorlink
Wireless Additions
These microcontrollers are coming with a built on Wireless control such as Zigbee (mouser link) , however these are not the same architecture as the standard S12.
Atmel- Atmega Series
The Atmega 128L is a very interesting microcontroller with a large amount of support and code such as AVRLib
Picture of Atmega128 Pinout
Freescale also has an interesting article on robotic arm control using a MC56F8300 (60Mhz, 60MIPS) , MC33388 (CAN chip), MPC500 (floating point co-processor) and a variety of H-bridges MC33886 (5.2A) or a Dual Power MC34922 (4.0A) ,
The Roadmap of motor control
In many ways the evolution of motor control processors will directly correalate with the Hybrid Car motor control technology using IGBTs instead of the H-bridge interface, the design tools are also quickly converging for High Power Motor control, see Open Source Motor Controller
Interesting Sensors and Interfaces, Cherry Magnetic Transducer Sensors
SPI to I2C Bridge from Si Labs, TAOS color and light to voltage sensor
Optical Encoders are a simple optical sensor that pulse when a light/dark wheel attached to a shaft rotates. AEDR 8400
Magnetic Encoders are a more complicated technology using magnets instead of light to detect changes on a wheel attached to a motor's shaft. Picture below of the Avago AEAT-6010
see the my new official website at alynch.org