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Meet the Queen of the Most Wonderfully Craptastic Machines

Simone Giertz’s misbehaving “shitty robots” may not be the beginning of Skynet, but they do manage to perform their functions in some seriously unproductive (read: shitty) ways. And as they are unarmed—for the most part—their gross incompetence and near 100% failure rate simply make them some of the most hilariously enjoyable contraptions ever seen on the internet. Except for the chopping machine featured above, that one is coming for you, Chad.

Giertz, a self-proclaimed “Maker/robotics enthusiast/non-engineer” from Stockholm, Sweden, has an eponymously named YouTube Channel that has exploded in popularity since her videos like “the wake-up machine” (seen below) have gone super viral, garnering over 80,000,000 views.

She is clearly an unstoppable inventing machine herself, and Giertz wants to revolutionize all aspects of the day-to-day grind with her shitty machines, starting with eating breakfast in a cutting-edge, and yet totally useless manner:

For brushing your teeth, Giertz has invented a machine that aggressively scrubs your incisors—kind of—while completely missing the rest of your mouth:

And finally, once you’re done with breakfast and oral hygiene, Giertz’s lipstick robot will help to brighten up your face, by making you look like a clown who applied his or her makeup during a bumpy car ride:

As for the tech, Giertz uses prosumer-friendly hardware like Arduino UNO boards, which allow people to build “digital devices and interactive objects that can sense and control objects in the physical world,” as well as more advanced components like salad tongs and fake amputated rubber arms.

If you want to learn more about how Giertz builds her machines, you can check out an article she wrote for Popular Science outlining her chopping machine build process here, or her behind-the-scenes blog, here. No word yet on what Giertz has planned for future projects, although there is rumor that the security team from Jurassic World, and whoever built HAL 9000 may be looking to collaborate.

What do you think of Giertz’s “shitty machines”? What humdrum task would you like to see them take over, and screw up, next? Let us know in the comments section below!

Images: Simone Giertz

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