A structured comparison of MCUs, MPUs, and COM/SOM modules for robotic system design. MCUs excel at real-time control with deterministic latency and low power, MPUs handle compute-intensive tasks like computer vision and AI but lack real-time guarantees, and COM/SOM modules accelerate development with pre-integrated hardware at higher cost. Most complex robots use a hybrid multilayer architecture combining all three. The post also covers inter-processor communication options including SPI, UART, CAN, Ethernet/TSN, and ROS 2/DDS middleware, along with synchronization techniques like PTP hardware timestamping.
Table of contents
Architectures between control and computation layersMCU s : determinism and real-time controlMPU s : computing power and advanced operating systemsCOM s /SOM s : modularity and accelerated developmentWhat are the selection criteria?Integration and communication between componentsFinal considerations43 Impressions