Simone Giertz is an inventor of useless robots. She finds joy and freedom in learning to build machines that are meant to fail. She shares that joy with millions through her YouTube channel. Simone Giertz is an inventor and robotics enthusiast, originally from Sweden. She began making robots in 2013, and two years later decided to start displaying her inventions on YouTube.

For the past few years, Simone Giertz has been building an army of mediocre machines. Her designs include an alarm clock that slaps you in the face; a helmet that (almost) brushes your teeth; and a repurposed Dremel tool that (sorta) wipes your ass. Videos of her creations have attracted close to half a million YouTube subscribers, racked up tens of millions of views, and earned her the affectionate title of "Queen of Shitty Robots." In the video above, Giertz shows us around her San Francisco studio where she builds and tests her ignoble inventions. "When I started building things, obviously I was pretty bad at it," she says.

And while they're technically adept -- they do work -- they don't actually work very well. Yahtch has found fame online via her useless robots, including one that's been viewed more than a million times online. Yahtch tells NPR she wants other people to get into robotics. "To me, the goal of building useless and ridiculous robots is more -- I mean, in some way, it's like a personal goal because I think it's really fun, and I think having fun is super important to create things," she says. That's evidenced by her accompanying "making of" videos to some of the machines (there's some salty language in this video).