Brushless Motor Microcontoller

[JesseK]

I can't seem to find a direct answer to this question, so I have to ask! I want to get into R/C in the offseason, yet I don't simply want to drive the car .. I want it to mess around with autonomous driving. I don't doubt that the micro controller requirements will grow as I get more involved with this, but for the first year I need a controller that's capable of handling 6 analog sensors, 6 digital sensors, 1 servo output and 1-2 outputs for brushless motors.

The problem I have with this is that I'm not sure if a brushless motor control is the same as a brushed motor control, from the communications signal perspective. For instance -- can I use the VEX microcontroller I already have to control a brushless motor controller that supports a PWM input? I've forgotten most of what I learned as an EE where analog circuits are concerned since I've done mostly embedded and upper-level programming since I got out of college ... so purchasing a chip (like an arduino) and designing a circuit is alot more than I'd like to have to do at the moment.