Not sure if this belongs in electronics or computer science... When dealing with robotics, installing an entire PC as a control mechanism seems impractical considering size, heat, and power-consumption parameters, at least in robots that aren't intended to run with AC-power and control wires hanging off of them. For more self-contained builds, what kind of control hardware is common? I'm sure this probably varies by application, but any insight is welcome information =)
Just off the top of my head, I can imagine one would need at least a 'motherboard' with some kind of processor on it, whether it's an Intel/AMD type PC processor or one specifically tailored to controlling servos and the like. Power moderation should be important in extending battery life, so I would reason that PC processors might be a bit overkill for such an implementation, yet while looking at builds of some robots, I see a number of them running specialized Linux distributions. Any knowledge about this?