FPGA or Microcontroller for Robot Project?

[mg187023]

Hi I'm currently doing a design project for my engineering class, and we have to select either an FPGA and use VHDL or a microcontroller. The project entails following a line, and using IR communication to change the colors of LEDs.


I know that FPGAs might be better because you can do parallel processing, but microcontrollers (I would be using arduino) would probably be easier.

Does anyone have any recommendations?

Thanks

 

[MFrielink]

Well, do you really need parallel processing for your project?
From the information I can't tell if you do.

Using a arduino instead of an FPGA can save you money in your project budget.

 

[Fooality]

Yeah, I agree with MFrielink. Don't use an FPGA unless you have something really algorithmically simple you need to do with incredible speed and low (like nanosecond) latency.

 

[ZlBarnoussi]

I can understand that you want parallel processing. It can take quite some time to drive the IR sensor, this can solve in the robot not following the line for a few ms.
Although I do think a FPGA is a bit of overkill for a robot that only needs to follow a line and drive an IR sensor.
You could go for the uC and use interrupt to call you code.
Or just optimize your code.