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This self-taught engineer invents robots designed to fail hilariously at their jobs

robot waiters
Robot couple Xiaolan (L) and Xiaotao carry trays of food at a restaurant in Jinhua, Zhejiang province, China, May 18, 2015.
Reuters/Stringer

The title "Queen of Sh---y Robots" is one Simone Giertz bears proudly.

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The 25-year-old YouTube star and self-taught robot engineer from Sweden has made a name for herself creating robots that help her with everyday tasks like eating breakfast or shampooing her hair. The schtick? They're really, really bad at "helping."

Her videos of her testing her "sh---y robots" have over 10 million views on YouTube and her channel is nearing 200,000 subscribers. On Instagram, Giertz has over 21,500 followers and her videos frequently pop up on the Reddit's "Sh---y Robots" subreddit.

Her machines may not be the best tool for getting their intended jobs done, but they certainly entertain viewers.

Giertz started working with electronics about two and a half years ago in 2013 just for fun, she tells Tech Insider. From there, it turned into a passion.

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One of her first creations was the toothbrush helmet. She had hoped to start a children's show but when the pilot wasn't picked up, she uploaded her silly creation to YouTube instead.

Since then she's continued to build more robots and upload them for the internet to enjoy. One early video showed up on Reddit and quickly garnered half a million views in a day according to Giertz. "Sometimes I think this is all so wonderfully bizarre that I think I'm delusional, I never anticipated it," she tells TI.

Giertz doesn't have a degree, and studied physics while she was in school for a year before dropping out. With no background in robotics or engineering, she had to spend hours on Google to figure out how to build anything.

"I was so terribly confused," she says. "[But] in some ways it was nice, because once I found the tools I needed, I really understood what they were good for."

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When she has an idea for a new robot, Giertz says she usually starts by doing a rough sketch by hand, like so:

Sketches for the hair washing machine 🤖🚿

A photo posted by Simone Giertz (@simonegiertz) on May 13, 2016 at 6:25am PDT

After that, she creates a model on the computer and comes up with a list of supplies and products she'll need to make the robot.

Once she orders parts, Giertz tells TI it can take up to two weeks for them to arrive in the mail. Then the building can start.

While she can still get stumped while creating her robots, she says she now manages to power through and get the job done. "The most difficult part is always the mechanical design," Giertz tells TI.

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The results of the finished robots are usually quite funny, like the breakfast machine that makes a mess and fails to get any food to the user's mouth or the chopping machine that forcefully chops at whatever is beneath it — including the cutting board. 

"I found it was way more fun to build useless stuff," she tells TI. The applause machine is one of Giertz's more recent inventions:

As for her favorite robots, Giertz tells TI that she loves them all equally. Right now, she's a big fan of the mechanical arms she added to her iPhone. Just watch it crawl away!

While all of her robots and videos are fun to watch, some are a little less fun to test.

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"The wake up machine was actually pretty painful after some time," Giertz tells TI. She designed the robot to inspire herself to get out of bed, though instead of a simple alarm, her robot repeatedly slaps the user in the head. Some of Giertz's hair even got stuck in the wake up machine while filming.

Giertz tells TI any lost hair or pain was worth it. "That is the first one that really took off," she says. "It was a very important milestone."

The lipstick machine was also a rough one to test, she says — it took a lot of scrubbing to clean off the lipstick that ended up on her face and in her hair (instead of on her lips). 

HAPPY FRIDAY ERRBODHEY 👏💄

A video posted by Simone Giertz (@simonegiertz) on Feb 5, 2016 at 7:35am PST

The experience of becoming an internet dubbed "Queen" and gaining such a following has been overwhelming, Giertz says, but she's happy to be viewed by some as a role model for teaching herself how to build these robots in the first place.

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"People are generally really nice and cheering me on," she says about her viewers.

As for what's next, Giertz is moving to San Francisco, California, to work with former Mythbuster and current "maker" Adam Savage at the company Tested, but she tells TI "I'm still not anticipating anything, I'm just trying to tag along."

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