Here’s a mini-segway wannabee. It’s the work of Italian programmer Nicola, The robot is based on an Arduino mainboard and gyros, with a couple of motors capable of feeding back their position. The gyros work with accelerometers to monitor whether the robot is moving forward or backward, spinning, tipping forward or falling back. That data is handled by the Arduino, which also gets input from the motors to figure out the robot’s speed.

It will cost around $350 to build, but it’s not perfect yet. Eventually the robot does fall, but it balances pretty well before that happens. In the last video, the bot does well balancing a wooden stick. Nicola believes that with a couple more weeks of working the bugs out, the consistency rate will improve. Videos below.
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This Segway-inspired bot just can’t get it right and keeps failing. But it wants so bad to be a Segway. To give it some appropriate credit where credit is due, it’s impressive that a bot that top heavy stands as long as it does. But it fails and fails again. Which is a bit cute actually. You have to give it points for trying. Video below. You can build your own with an available guide.
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