The Virtual Robotics Lab in education: Hands-on experiments with virtual robotic systems in the Industry 4.0 era

A picture is worth more than 1000 words, a video more than 1000 pictures – and an interactive simulation more than 1000 videos. People have to see, experience, touch, and learn things in order to understand them sustainably. This is, to put it bluntly, the special and innovative aspect of the Virtual Robotics Lab concept. It enables hands-on experiments for Industry 4.0 technologies and systems in real-time, interactively and yet safely, consistently self-controlled, without special requirements on hardware and end devices while using high-quality visualizations and interactive simulations. In the context of blended learning and Experiential Learning Theory (ELT), the Virtual Robotics Lab thus provides an effective and efficient format of digital teaching.