I'm relatively new to FPGA. I've learnt vhdl and done few designs in xilinx Spartan II fpga, xsa v1.2 board. I've been involved in robotics and have designed some robotic system (basically line tracking, odometry, PID etc) but those were microcontroller based.
Now I'm trying to work and do some research in FPGA based robotics system especially in vision systems and control system. Want to make a working robot with motion control, vision systems to what ever level I can within a year. (well that's the time I've to complete at least one robot with some basic systems.), I've few questions, and hope I'll get the answers!!!!!
i) The design loaded in FPGA is lost when the power goes out. So how can we preserve the hardware designed so that it need not be loaded again and again from PC.
ii) The robots we're going to make must be autonomous, and we can't use PC. So what would be the best FPGA board (preferebly from Xilinx), well I'm thinking of one supporting the microblaze.