EV3 Robotics›Level 4 · WRO Prep›Lesson 40
Level 4 · Lesson 40 · EV3-L04-4060 minutes · Block 5 of 6 · Mat: WRO 2025 — The Future of Robots
Competition conditions — and you do not find out which mission until just before the round.
Every mock round so far let you run the route you had practised. Today the mission is drawn at random in front of you, minutes before you start. That is what a real round does, and it is the reason this block exists.
This is the payoff. The menu has been a convenience you were asked to build. Today it is the only reason you can start at all. A team still carrying six separate programs finds out today what it costs to load the right one with a scorer waiting.
Everything is live: launch pad 1 at A, pad 3 at B, pad 5 at C, the launch gantry at D, and the satellite row at E, from HOME in the bottom-left corner and back to it.
How the draw works. Write each mission from your menu on a slip. Somebody from another team draws one, reads it aloud, and the setup clock starts at that moment. No warning, no discussion beforehand.
Draw again, separately, for round two. It may come up the same. That is what random means, and a team that assumes it will be different is making the same mistake as a team that assumes it will be the same.
Before the first draw, write down what you expect this block to have changed. Then find out.
Setup time is scored today, in its own right. From the draw being read aloud to hands off the robot. Time it. It is a number this block should have made small, and it is the clearest evidence of whether the architecture works.
The same discipline as the previous four mocks, plus two that belong to this block:
The program is finished. Today’s job is to stop touching it and confirm the right version is on the Brick.
Check the six initialisations from lesson 39 are all present and all at the top: both log lists emptied, the menu choice set, the window start set, the synch flag false, the gyro calibrated.
Check every menu entry has a working mission behind it. An entry that does nothing is a slip in the draw container that you cannot run — take it off the menu and out of the container, together, or the two will disagree.
And write the setup ritual down where the person doing it can read it, the way lesson 23 did for placement: draw read aloud, module fitted per the card, robot placed, menu entry selected, selection read back aloud by a second person, centre pressed, hands off. Reading the selection back is five seconds and it is the only check on the one mistake nothing else catches.
Two minutes between rounds, which is one change. Decide it while watching the round fail, not afterwards.
This block adds a new class of thing that can go wrong, and it is worth separating before you change anything:
Make the change, run again, record whether the score moved. If it did not, put it back.
Draw. Round one is cold. Setup clock from the moment the slip is read aloud. Fit, place, choose, read back, press, hands off. Score it, time the round, and record the setup time separately.
Two minutes. One change. Draw again. Round two. Score it, time it, record the setup.
After each round, read the robot’s own summary off the screen and compare it against the scorer’s sheet before leaving the table. If they disagree, that is a conversation to have while the mat is still set up.
The last lesson of a block collects the block:
That is 40 of 48. One block left, and it is on the 2026 mat — this season’s, deliberately last, so the final tournament runs on the mat that actually matters. Block 6 teaches almost nothing new. It takes the robot, the controller, the architecture and the habits you now have, and asks you to compete with them.
This model drives, so its challenges are run on a mat. Mats differ between branches — check you are looking at the one in your room.
WRO 2025 RoboMission Elementary — The Future of Robots · official WRO game mat, 2362 × 1143 mm
The challenges name these places rather than distances, so the same challenge works on any mat:
Switch mats above and every route below is redrawn on the mat you chose.
Work through the challenges in order — each is harder than the last. The mission comes after all three, and it is meant to make you plan before you build.
Set the mat up to competition standard — flat, taped, level table, lighting as on the day, battery charged, both modules and their configuration cards on the table beside the robot. Write each menu entry on a slip; somebody from another team draws one, reads it aloud, and the setup clock starts at that moment.
Run round one cold and time TWO things separately: the round, and the setup from the draw being read aloud to hands off the robot. Setup is the number this block should have made small. Then two minutes, one change, draw again, round two — it may come up the same, because that is what random means.
Separate the failures before changing anything. Wrong mission run? That is the menu or the setup ritual. Right mission run badly? That is the route, which Block 4 owns. Behaved differently from practice? Suspect something that was not reset before suspecting anything else.
Score the 2025 set in a timed round where the mission is drawn at random just before you start, then compare the robot's own summary against the scorer's sheet before leaving the table. Journal the menu design and what it saved between runs, against what six separate programs would have cost — that is the headline number for this block, and it is the first time the menu has been used for the reason it was built.