Opening a Project/Selecting a Challenge Mat in the Virtual Robotics Toolkit

As you may have already noticed, upon launching the simulator, you are greeted by the Welcome Screen.

This window is divided into four tabs.

1. Sim Basics: A collection of beginner projects to get you started, including Sandbox, Apartment Cleanup, and Maze.

2. Competition Portal [COMING SOON]: A collection of advanced multi-player projects where you can test your newly learned skills against another friend or autonomous robot. Get familiar with registering for competitions - click here.

3. FIRST LEGO League: FIRST LEGO League's 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 challenge mats (Animal Allies, HydroDynamics, IntoOrbit, City Shaper)

4. WRO (World Robot Olympiad):  World Robot Olympiad's 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 challenge mats.

The first tab, "Sim Basics," contains four projects to help you get started.

• Sandbox Project is nothing more than an empty room with a robot. In this distraction-free environment, you can learn the basics of starting and stopping the simulator, as well as how to use the keyboard controls to drive the robot.

• Maze helps you learn how to connect the MINDSTORMS® programming environment to the simulator. This will allow us to solve the maze by writing our own programs using MINDSTORMS® software and uploading it to the existing virtual robot in the simulator.

• Clean-up Challenge is the "build" challenge in this training series. While we can use the given robot to clear the playing surface, the real goal here is to introduce LEGO Digital Designer and demonstrate how we can use the LDraw import wizard to work with our own customized robots.

• Apartment is the last in the series of training projects. Here we can use the given robot along with its various attachments, and use our skills to program it to navigate around the room and vacuum the blocks littered on the floor.

The third tab, "FIRST LEGO League," contains the following challenge mats:

• Animal Allies (2016)

• HydroDynamics (2017)

• IntoOrbit (2018)

• City Shaper (2019)

The fourth tab, "WRO," contains the following challenges for 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019:

• Recycling Plant, Waste Sorting, Clean Road to School (2016)

• Elementary Challenge, Junior High Challenge, High School Challenge (2017, 2018, & 2019)


Each project tile on the Welcome Screen is further divided into:

  • Preview - A preview video of the challenge.
  • Read More - A PDF built around that particular project file.


Click on the tiled image to launch the project and give your project a name.