Integrating App Inventor with ROS (Robot Operating System)

[1ceclim6er]

I am posting this in the "general questions" topic, since I am not sure what I want to do is even possible.

I am trying to interact with ROS (Robot Operating System) through an app built with AI2, which means I need to send commands and data to a ROS node. To do this I would need to integrate the ROS libraries for Android such as this, http://wiki.ros.org/android_apps, with AI2.

Is it possible to do this, and if yes, how?

[Farzeen Harunani]

Hi,
You can do it via an extension!
http://appinventor.mit.edu/extensions/
Farzeen

[1ceclim6er]

Hi,

could you be a bit more specific?
Is there an extension for ROS libraries? I couldn't find one.

Cheers

[Farzeen Harunani]

As far as I know, no, nobody has written one. 

Essentially, someone would have to write this extension in java that would link the API calls to blocks. Do you have any coding experience? Would you be able to write such an extension?

Farzeen

[1ceclim6er]

No coding experience in java, unfortunately, and only a little in C++.
So the answer is probably no.

Edit: But I may look into it. It really depends whether it will be more time efficient to try writing an extension with no java experience, or just to use Android Studio or Qt. I was going to use AI2 because it seemed to be the least time consuming way, but having to write my own extension may change that.