The work is devoted to the review and analysis of software for designing control programs and 2D/3D modeling of the mobile robots for academic and industrial applications. A generalized structural diagram of the hierarchical mobile robot control system with decentralized software processing of information and separate software and hardware components located remote from each other are presented in the paper. Various programming environments which represent a wide range of tools for creating different types models and systems are considered for building the mobile robots and their control systems. Moreover, the issues of using graphic and text software environments with high-level programming languages have been reviewed. LabView, EV3-G, TRIK Studio, ROBO Pro, Arduino and Scratch were considered among the integrated development environments. Player/Stage, Gazebo, RoboDK and others were considered among the software packages for modeling the operation of the mobile robots. Presented examples of academic and industrial software are analyzed according to the following criteria: mathematical expressions, computational models, interpretation, standalone use, code generation, debugging, tutorials, free, platforms, constructors and development prospects. And also robotic systems simulators are considered as tools for testing the efficiency, safety and reliability of control algorithms through 2D and 3D simulations.