Autonomous and Controllable Arduino Robot from and Android device

Projects General Guidance
1

My class is currently being pressured into coming up for ideas for our projects next year, one of the few things that seem fun to do while fitting the criteria is an Arduino robot, I have no experience in Arduino (yet) so thought I'd come here to ask a few things.

Is it possible for the user to control the board from an Android device? So far I've only seen pre-built Android apps recieving data form the Arduino sensors but I was wondering if you could make an app that could control (direction, stopping, starting etc) the robot over Bluetooth?

If possible how hard would this be? It would be due in Summer 2013 so I have enough time to learn what I need, and I'm pretty motivated to do this.

2

It is certainly possible and not that difficult.

I've written a custom Android app to control my project via the RN42 bluetooth chip (see BlueSmirf at Sparkfun). The Sparkfun breakout board only requires 4 pins (Rx/Tx, VCC and GND). There is a Bluetooth demo app provided with the ADK (Android Developer's Kit) that will get you started on the Android side.

-Mitch