I am new to Bittle and have just received a unit and so far have just operated it with the IR remote.
I did do some reading on your challenges page that sound super interesting. I did notice that 1 of the biggest restraints is the MCU processing power and available RAM. I have also noticed that an ESP32 main board is under development and this will fix this problem but will add a new problem that ESP32 has very low pin count. I also notice that your currently using a PCA9685 IC to create the PWM signals for servo control. The PCA9685 is driven via I2C which is a very slow protocol, I am not sure whether your using the MPU6050 in I2C mode or SPI mode (all the quad-copter drones use SPI mode for faster feed back loops).
Have you looked at the K210 MCU? It is a dual core 64bit RISC-V chip clocked at 400MHz (most people have been over clocking to 600MHZ) with a number of hardware accelerators and lots of RAM and large pin count. Having a fast MCU with lots of pins means you won't need the PCA9685 as the PWM can be generated by the timers on the MCU meaning very fast updates compared to an external I2C chip. The K210 also has it's own parallel camera, LCD and mic peripheral as it is desinged to run AI on the edge.
Sipeed make a moudule for the K210 that has all the need supporting circuits like crystal oscillators and capacitors and also an ESP8266 for Wifi connectivity. see the module here https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001956894670.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.13111a07Mvn3fX&algo_pvid=a7700f87-27bf-48f1-9ef6-5ef2263ed9f8&algo_exp_id=a7700f87-27bf-48f1-9ef6-5ef2263ed9f8-14
I have used Sipeeds Dev boards for controlling some of my robot that I have built that needed computer vision on the edge.
Yes, we considered the options you mentioned. When deciding the board, we want to separate the control hierarchy of motion and mind. A chip at ESP32's capacity is sufficient for real-time motion instructions and can serve as a stand-alone product at a lower price. If we want to add more functionalities, we prefer to use a separate chip to avoid interrupting the pace of motion. We also considered the popularity, ease of setup, and the stability of supply of a certain board. K210 is a possible chip we are evaluating to develop the brain of our future robots. I will visit Sipeed's office later this year.