Our plan is to use this with some open source robotic arms we are developing. if you load up everything on firmware and hardware you have to scale the processor and support components.
For instance with a modular robot with mcu’s at each arm joint you could use the use offload chips like LAN9252/3/4 you can now network via ethercat with very low jitter, If you need encoders you could add trinimac TMC4671-LA chips you can then interface stepper, servo or bldc motors, add external drivers, have encoding, temp, voltage, current sensing, brake control with connecting at an arm joint to a single mcu chip or use them for industrial bots placing the controllers and drivers at the base and then using mcu’s for networking and sensors at the joint. You can of course use cheaper trinimac chips or similar controllers for those not needing or wanting encoding functionality and such built in.