Meet YouTube’s ‘queen of sh—y robots’

Swedish robotics enthusiast and professional YouTuber Simone Giertz is attracting thousands of people to her channel by publishing videos of useless cyborgs she creates. The 26-year-old who brands herself as “the queen of sh—y robots” has invented, for example, a breakfast machine that pours cereal and milk into a bowl and feeds a user with a spoon. The only catch is that programming robots is a complicated thing to do, that is why the mechanic arm leaves a mess on the table by dropping all the ingredients. Giertz’s other creations include an alarm clock that slaps the user, a lipstick applicator, and cyborg that shampoos user’s hair. Metro chats with the YouTube starabout her inventions.

How did you come up with the ideato create these robots?

It wasn’t as much an idea as something that just happened. I thought it was fun to build useless things and the internet seems to think it’s fun to watch.

Why are you making them?

Because it’s a better use of my time than scrolling through Facebook. That reason applies to pretty much anything.

Is it hard to make these robots?

In the beginning it was pretty hard for me as a non-engineer to build them but now things tend to run fairly smoothly. It takes as long as I let it take, I could spend weeks and weeks on a single build but sometimes I just need to get my thumb out of my butt and publish it.

What are the best useless machines you’ve made?

Depends on how you think of it. The most useless one is probably the Breakfast Machine or the Lipstick Robot. The one that works best is probably the machine that blows my nose.

Could any of your inventions be actually helpful?

I mean, they are all helpful in their own ways. They make people laugh and get people excited about building stuff. That’s pretty useful in my opinion.

You have a lot of followers on your channel. What attracts them to your videos?

Hopefully not just that I’m a girl.

What robot are you working on now?

I’m working on hauling my butt into space. Stay tuned.

-Dmitry Belyaev