Choosing a controller board for two projects

[TheDuck]

I just love the idea of propeller boards.

[url]http://www.parallax.com/tabid/407/Default.aspx[/url]

8 'cogs' or independent CPUs on board, support for plug-and-play accelerometer, GPS and more. You can dedicate a CPU to balance, one to planning, one to sensors, or flip the idea on its head and have an 8-cell neural network or multiples of same. Lots of options.

If you want to go crazy you could get an FPGA chip and create software in hardware -- but I'm pretty sure that's biting off a bit too much.

As for the smallest, that sounds really interesting. I wonder what's out there? How much "smarts" are you planning on putting into it? Would something like BEAM robotics and hardware-based control systems work here?