Frugal mechatronic design of a mobile self-balancing robot

Mobile robots are commonly used for tasks such as monitoring, mapping, and transportation. Among them, the self-balancing robot stands out, as it is capable of maintaining balance and adapting to different slopes, which makes it particularly suitable for material distribution. However, commercial robots are often costly, which limits their practical implementation. Rapid Manufacturing (RM), through additive manufacturing (AM), offers a potential approach by enabling low-cost and reproducible designs. This approach is characteristic of frugal innovation, allowing the robot’s structure and component selection to be scalable and low-cost, thereby supporting more efficient use of available resources. This manuscript describes a frugal mechatronic design for a self-balancing mobile robot with a 5 kg payload, based on a dynamic mechatronic model. A feasible solution was obtained through CAD development, appropriate component selection, and instrumentation for the synthesis of the physical configuration, while dynamic model simulations were used to parameterise inertial parameters. The resulting design is presented as a reproducible and affordable proposal. Smart citations: https://scite.ai/reports/10.61467/2007.1558.2026.v17i1.1159 Dimensions.Open Alex.