You could consider using a
TReX Jr, which can serve as an ESC and drive your Tamiya motors based on signals from your RC receiver. It also has the capacity to drive a third, unidirectional, 10 A continuous motor (if you're making a battle bot, you could use this third channel for a weapon). Perhaps more importantly, the TReX Jr can also be controlled by serial commands from a microcontroller, so if you decide you want to make your robot autonomous rather than radio controlled, you can do so fairly easily without having to get a whole new motor controller. The TReX Jr has the unique ability to switch between RC and serial control interfaces on the fly, meaning you could use your transmitter to switch your robot between autonomous and RC modes at will. For example, you could use your transmitter to allow your robot to function autonomously, and if it gets in trouble you can take control back using whichever transmitter channel is connected to channel input 5 on the TReX Jr and drive it to safety using RC.
- Ben