[Greg McKaskle]

This combo certainly has potential and is similar to the BeagleBone and other eval boards that are paired with sensors and act as a smart subsystem on a robot.

I'm not so sure that you need the 5 megapixels, and the key factor is more likely to be the configurability of the camera. If you can control its exposure, its color processing, and its resolution, that will be quite helpful in getting the data you want without noise and without the need for lots of extra processing. The other thing to keep in mind is the development tools and debugging tools. Vision systems rarely work the first time, debugging them can be tricky, and you frequently need to debug them when the environment changes. So invest in the ability to see the images and understand what the various processing steps are doing, and you will be far more productive later.

Sounds like a great project.
Greg McKaskle