Android App Inventor is now open for all to use and it has a new feature - you can use it to make xmas presents and create robot apps. Perhaps it's the name "Android" but it seems that a favorite pastime at Google is building robots to work with phones. What could be more fun.

App Inventor is a graphical programming tool designed to make the creation of Android Apps easy enough for anyone to join in. Until recently (Dec 15 2010) it was only available to the select few who qualified for the closed beta but now we can all play with it.

Lowering the bar for Android development may not sound like something that an experienced programmer would be interested in but it is a good way to create demos before starting work on the real thing.

There is also sets of apps that are valuable because they are personalized - a phone home app, an emergency app etc. And while you could build a general framework for stamping out such things it might be easier just to use App Inventor as a RAD tool. 

In addition the graphical approach is ideal for beginners and children. You could well use it as a way to teach programming with the motivation and reward of a phone App at the end of the exercise. Google is even suggesting that a customized phone App might make the best personalized "home made" xmas present for all the family this year.

All you need to use App Inventor is a Google account.

At the same time as letting App Inventor go into the wild, Google has released a version targeted at creating apps that can control robots. It's all part of their 20% robot project (Google employees can use 20% of their work time on any project they like).  Other fruits of the project include Cellbots for Android which control four different robot platforms and the Cellbot Python library. The App Inventor for Android works with Lego Mindstorms but Cellbots also works with IRobot Create and VEX plus.

Look out for our forthcoming article on getting started with App Inventor - coming soon.

More Information

App Inventor home page

http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2010/12/robot-hackathon-connects-with-android.html