Swedish woman builds and films quirky robots for a living

Demotivated by regular nine-to-five jobs, robotics enthusiast Simone Giertz started building quirky robots for fun.

Her most popular creation thus far? An alarm clock that slaps her awake every morning with a rubber arm.

And as painful as that sounds, the video of her invention managed to attract over 1 million views on YouTube, close to 16,600 likes and a lot of laughter.

The 25-year-old started posting videos of her crazy robot inventions last year but her hobby is now her full-time job.

"I wanted to see if I could make a living off of having fun," Ms Giertz said in a video by Quartz News on May 27.

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So how has she been making her money? By licensing her videos for television as well as appearing on shows and events.

She calls herself the "Queen of Sh***y Robots" because she has created a variety of bots like a toothbrush helmet to help her brush her teeth in the morning, as well as a lipstick robot to help her apply lipstick.

Although they are designed to make life easier for the working adult, most of her robots turned out to be rather useless because their mechanics are neither consistent nor accurate.

But this hasn't caused her to lose any fans though. Over 192,000 people seem to find the videos of her eccentric inventions entertaining and have subscribed to her YouTube channel.

Here are some of their comments:

Even though she's from Sweden, Ms Giertz believes that only 3 per cent of her audience are from her home country.

She elaborated in her latest video that some of her biggest fans are from China and Japan and that she's even been invited to appear on a couple of Japanese game shows.

On top of her own YouTube channel, Ms Giertz has also paired up with Adam Savage from Tested, a science and technology vlogger who is known for building machines and testing gadgets and products.

As she gains more popularity fromthe video collaboration, Ms Giertz was asked why she chose to take up a hobby that is more typical of a guy.

"I would much rather be acknowledged for the work that I do rather than being a woman doing the type of work I do," she told Quartz News.

She also gets inspired by other YouTube personalities. In an interview with The Verge, Ms Giertz shared some of her favourite other vloggers. 

"I really like Tested. Officially, I really like the ones who are great science communicators, and show different things you can do with engineering. Colin Furze has built some crazy stuff on his channel, he’s just mad. Unofficially, I binge watch people like Grace Helbig and Jenna Marbles, and the occasional Dr. Pimple Popper.

mldas@sph.com.sg