Samantha Johnson [00:00:00] The first deafblind person I ever met, her name was Elaine. When I was leaving her, I asked how we could stay in touch, and she said, "Oh, we can't. You'll just have to catch me next time you see me because you can't call me." I immediately ran to my ASL teacher, who was deaf as well, and I was like, "Well, what if there was some sort of robot we could make for them?"

She goes, "Try." I got into robotics not necessarily because of the robotics themselves, but because of what they could do. DeafBlind people were struggling immensely in the pandemic with lack of access to interpreting services, social distancing, and I thought robotics could be the solution to that.

When I first started this company five years ago, every pitch I gave told me to put the DeafBlind thing aside and do that later. They didn't really think that we could make a profit off of this product.

DeafBlind people are now able to make their own doctor's appointments. They're able to call extensions of friends and families and cousins, but they're also able to connect with each other, which has been really rewarding to see.

This one DeafBlind woman, she called her daughter for the first time using the robot, and she sat there the whole time, sobbing on the phone talking to her daughter. And she's like, "It's your mom. It's your mom on the phone." Checking the weather, checking the news, all these things are so beneficial and helpful, but to have this connectivity, I think really is what gave this product its life, you know?

Brian Heater [00:01:08] Initially, you don't know if this is even a product that they necessarily want, if they would be able to use a robot. So how did you actually start bringing people on board?
Hey, folks. Welcome to Automated. My name is Brian Heater. I am the managing editor at the Association for Advancing Automation. We've got another episode from our trip to MassRobotics this week. We are catching up with Samantha Johnson, the co-founder and CEO of Tatum Robotics. I first chatted with her at the company's very early stages over at MassRobotics several years ago, and it's been very cool seeing how far the project and the company have come.

She's channeled her robotics know-how and engineering into serving the DeafBlind community. It is a great company and a great conversation. Thank you as always for listening. If you've been enjoying the show, it would be a huge help if you would like and subscribe and tell a couple of friends, and while you're at it, why not subscribe to the newsletter over at automated.fm?

Now, please enjoy this conversation with Samantha Johnson of Tatum Robotics.

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What did you learn from the salamanders?

Samantha Johnson [00:03:14] Well, that was a really interesting lab, because I went into that with very little biology experience. Despite being a bioengineer, I was accepted into the lab, I think, because they thought I would do something cool with robotics. I think that's why they wanted me there. But interestingly, I was so interested by the axolotls, because their genome is 98% similar to a human's, but they have all these incredible properties.
You can chop off their arm and it will completely regrow, and we don't quite know why. There are all these theories -

Brian Heater [00:03:42] So you didn't solve that mystery during your semester?

Samantha Johnson [00:03:44] I did not solve it in my semester - it got cut short before COVID began - but there are some incredible minds on it. It was really interesting to see some automation and innovation happening around the lab work as well. Now we're seeing some companies at MassRobotics that are doing some lab-based automation, and I hope to see those kinds of things move into the labs in the future as well.

Brian Heater [00:04:02] You said you were a bioengineer, but you also said that part of the reason why you were accepted is because they thought you would be bringing a robot. So you were already deep into robotics at that point?

Samantha Johnson [00:04:13] No. I thought robots were really interesting, and I thought that robots could have really interesting applications.

I was studying engineering and had very little experience with robotics, but I wanted to investigate how they could be used, and the PI I was working under also had this very similar curiosity. We were trying to look at how a lot of wet lab tasks are very tedious. They take a long time. They require a lot of precision, and there was this question of whether robots could help supplement that.

So we went into this with a very similar question mark, and I was into 3D printing at the time. I was trying to make all these attachments for the robot arms that already existed. A few months into that process, COVID occurred and shut down all the labs, and unfortunately, all of that research had to come to a pause, but it gave me the opportunity to start my research for Tatum.

So it was a really interesting pivot, but it gave me a lot of the perspective of what robots could do as I started in that lab.

Brian Heater [00:05:10] Obviously, it's not always the best idea to play hypotheticals, but do you think that you would be in robotics right now had the pandemic not occurred at that moment?

Samantha Johnson [00:05:21] Probably not. I was not a trained roboticist by any means. I was a bioengineering student at Northeastern University, which is more focused in wet lab work or computation - kind of MATLAB-heavy research - and not necessarily electronics or manufacturing and things like that.

And I got into robotics not necessarily because of the robotics themselves, but because of what they could do. I saw this problem of DeafBlind people not being able to communicate, and I thought robotics could be the solution to that. That's sort of how I found my way to robotics.

Brian Heater [00:05:53] So did any of your study actually translate - was any of it actually useful in what you're doing now?

Samantha Johnson [00:06:00] It was interesting because bioengineering often does involve trying to understand the human body - there's that element. So my scale-to-biodynamics classes were really interesting as I'm trying to mimic a human hand and its motions.

There was also a lot of intro classes - intro to coding, intro to electronics, intro to materials. I think as a founder, that was really helpful, to have a base level of a lot of things. And then it was really just, okay, now what do we need to focus and learn a lot more about?

But I remember being at my apartment - you know, before AI, so you have to Google things, like for real Google it - and I was on a Wikipedia page trying to figure out how to spin a servo. And that was me and my thesis. I had never done it before, so I was really starting from ground zero.

Brian Heater [00:06:42] So you shifted your focus to robotics and study?

Samantha Johnson [00:06:46] Yeah, at that point it was basically my thesis, so I was doing that pretty much full time, and that was where my study was exclusively. We had great collaborators who were helpful along the way. But yeah, I had to learn how to build a robot.

Brian Heater [00:07:00] It's interesting because robotics specifically is an incredibly physical field. All these companies I've talked to were some of the first to go back to working in person, right? It's hard to run a robotics company through remote work. So it's funny to me that you got into robotics and that you launched a robotics company during that period.

Samantha Johnson [00:07:26] Yeah, I was a bit ambitious, I will say. I definitely went into it thinking it might be a little bit easier than it ended up being. But I think also because it was COVID, I had this very forgiving space to innovate. Nobody was watching me. I could make a lot of mistakes along the way. I set many a PCB to smoke a little, you know.

But it was really this cool space where I could get a 3D printer and just print, and print, and print, and figure out what I was doing.

Brian Heater [00:07:51] You were doing this in your apartment?

Samantha Johnson [00:07:51] Yeah. I went to Micro Center down in Cambridge, bought a printer, set it up, and my poor roommates got to see a lot of finger prototypes along the way.

And I just kind of kept seeing it develop, and then eventually moved back into the lab when the world opened up a little bit, starting to build a team when I officially started the company after my thesis wrapped up. So it's been a really fun process along the way.

Brian Heater [00:08:11] Okay. So it was a thesis project. At what point did it actually become, "Oh, this could actually be a business"?

Samantha Johnson [00:08:17] Yeah, I wouldn't say I started the thesis thinking entrepreneurially. I started the thesis because DeafBlind people were struggling immensely in the pandemic with lack of access to interpreting services and social distancing.

Brian Heater [00:08:29] Well, let's talk about that real quick, because I think that's an important point here - that in order for them to communicate, somebody has to be in the room. Somebody physically has to be touching them.
Samantha Johnson [00:08:40] Exactly. DeafBlind people communicate through tactile sign language because they can't see or hear, so they actually hold onto the hand of the person that's signing. So basically, we'd be too far away to be tactile signing. Naturally, the pandemic was hugely impactful, and arguably overnight, with very little plan and preparation for the world - and also for this community that relies so heavily on in-person contact.

Brian Heater [00:09:01] As I was reading up on this project, something that really got me in the gut was that because it happened so quickly, and because there was so much social distancing, there were just a lot of people in that community who didn't know what happened, because all of a sudden people had to just stop showing up.

Samantha Johnson [00:09:19] Exactly. I was reading articles about DeafBlind people in institutions - at schools for the deaf, or in places you'd think would actually have more resources than most - crawling through buildings looking for access to information. Because, as you mentioned, it was overnight.

I had met DeafBlind people prior to beginning my thesis, and I'd had the idea of building something then, but as I mentioned, I didn't really have the skills to do it, or necessarily the time, and I wasn't really sure what path I was going on. And then when COVID happened and I was reading about these horrible experiences of DeafBlind people during the pandemic, I thought, now's the time to do it and really prioritize this and see what we can do with it.

Brian Heater [00:10:00] So the project that ultimately became the hand - you'd had that idea earlier, and the pandemic just sort of hastened your bringing it out?

Samantha Johnson [00:10:10] Yeah. I actually remember meeting the first DeafBlind person I ever met. Her name was Elaine, and Elaine's actually now on our team at Tatum Robotics, which is a fun full-circle moment. But she was the first DeafBlind person I ever met, and she is a ball of energy - an absolute superwoman, really.

And when I was leaving her, I asked how we could stay in touch, and she said, "Oh, we can't. You'll just have to catch me next time you see me because you can't call me." I immediately ran to my ASL teacher, who is deaf as well, and said, "Well, what if there was some sort of robot we could make for them?"

She goes, "Try." I was like, "Well, I don't know how to do that." And then COVID happened about six months after this, so it was still kind of fresh in my brain, and I still had that connection to the DeafBlind Contact Center that Elaine was a part of, and how I met her through my ASL class that I was just taking as an elective.

And that's sort of how all of this got started. It was very research-driven - there were no robots communicating with DeafBlind people at the time. It was really about finding out: can DeafBlind people receive from robotics? Do they want robotics to support them? So when I started it as my thesis, it wasn't necessarily, "This is going to change the world." It was a question of, can this be beneficial for the community?

Brian Heater [00:11:16] There are so many things - once you actually start interacting with people with that condition - that, I assume, just didn't even occur to you. Like the communication thing: there's just absolutely no way to keep in touch with somebody unless you're in the room with them.

Samantha Johnson [00:11:33] Yeah, and it's inspired our team quite a lot to - I wouldn't say necessarily feature creep, but really just want to make this such a holistic product. Because if I go to a DeafBlind person's house, there's no way for me to even tell her that I'm there. I just have to walk into her house and basically break and enter into this poor woman's house, because there's no way for me to tell her.

So now we're like, "Okay, well, we need to connect this with a smartwatch, so that we can actually alert them that we're arriving." It really just allows us to think even more broadly, because this community has been so void of technology.

Brian Heater [00:12:05] I just have so many logistical questions, right? I'm sure you did too, especially as you were pulling this together, as you were focus-grouping it. Let's talk about focus grouping. Initially, you don't know if this is even a product that they necessarily want, if they would use a robot. So how did you actually start bringing people on board?

Samantha Johnson [00:12:33] Yeah, and that was tricky as well, because again, I'm doing this in the heat of COVID. I started this officially, I guess, in May 2020, when the world was shut down. So there was a fair amount of assumptions I had to make leading into those first trials with DeafBlind people, because there wasn't a way for me to get in contact with them. And I remember the first validation I ever did - every assumption I made was wrong.

Brian Heater [00:12:55] Well, give me some.

Samantha Johnson [00:12:57] Yeah. I had covered the hand in this silicone skin.

Brian Heater [00:13:01] Like you wanted it to be human-like.

Samantha Johnson [00:13:02] Because I thought it would feel so human, and they were disgusted by it. They said it felt like a monster, and they wouldn't touch it until I removed it.

Brian Heater [00:13:08] It's like - you know, you peel the grapes and the spaghetti thing, the haunted house kind of trick.

Samantha Johnson [00:13:12] Very uncanny valley. And I remember peeling the skin off of my robot while there were a few DeafBlind people there, and then they were like, "All right, we'll start now with it, now that you've peeled the skin off of it." And, you know - I'm not DeafBlind. I can only make so many assumptions. I made a hand, and I just found a model online, and they said, "This feels too much like a man's hand. It's too big." And it's like, "Oh, I assumed if you guys sign with everybody, it would probably be fine." But making these small tweaks made it so much more accessible for more people.

Brian Heater [00:13:40] So is that why it's a female hand?

Samantha Johnson [00:13:43] Yeah. And that's why - it's funny, DeafBlind people also refer to it as a feminine product. A lot of DeafBlind people, now that they have it, are naming it. This one DeafBlind woman - I asked her, "What do you name your robot?" And she said, "Oh, well, my support person gave me a list of all female horse names, and I picked my favorite one," because she loves horses. So it's fun to see the names people are picking out for it. One DeafBlind person named hers Breezy, after the Olympic skier, because she said it felt like it moved the way people interpret how you ski - the hand moves that way.

Brian Heater [00:14:14] So at what point was it clear that this was actually something they were interested in?

Samantha Johnson [00:14:22] When they kept asking me when they could come back to see the next version - which was every time. I think it was also informative for me, as someone who had never built robotics before, and for this community that hadn't been a part of this R&D process for robotics before either. We were both like, "Well, how long do you think it'll take?" I was like, "I don't know - let's schedule something for a month and a half." And then in a month and a half I'd have nothing to show them, because you don't do any innovation in a month and a half.

But it was really - and then when I was about to graduate, the Canadian National Institute for the Blind saw what I was working on.

Brian Heater [00:14:51] Of course the Canadians were the first on it.

Samantha Johnson [00:14:53] The Canadians. Right? Thank goodness for the Canadians. And they connected me, and they actually said, if I wanted to continue this research and start a company, they would give me my first grant so that I could start this. And prior to that, I was looking for jobs. I was graduating. I wasn't necessarily planning to spin this out, and I spoke with a handful of the DeafBlind people who had been in those focus groups, and they were like, "Oh, you can't stop now. You haven't helped us yet. If you end right now, you haven't done anything. You haven't been able to benefit us."

So I decided to spin it out, and I came here to MassRobotics the next day and moved in.

Brian Heater [00:15:27] Yeah, I mean, when you and I first met, it was very early on - it was like 2021. You already had a hand prototype, and I was amazed at how quickly you had moved up till that point. So granted, you weren't necessarily able to turn things around in a month and a half, but you were on a mission, it seems like.

Samantha Johnson [00:15:45] Yeah, and I think it was really helpful that our mission was so set from the beginning. We weren't trying to build this thing that can do all things robotic hand. It's not also a gripper, and it's not gonna also pick up fruit off of a pick-and-place. We're making a hand for DeafBlind people for tactile sign, and I think that really helped focus us, and we're innovating for this sole purpose, exclusively from the feedback we're getting from the community.

And I think that's kind of tricky as innovators, as artists, as engineers - we have all these grand ideas, but it really doesn't matter what we think. It matters what the perspectives are that we're getting. And it's funny - people have been telling me from a very early stage, "You're moving so fast." And I think living in it, it doesn't feel that way, but it really is. Now that we have a product launched and it's out in the world, it's like, wow, we actually did this from the very start, from day one.

We built this from the absolute bottom up, twenty times over, and we're able to make something that now allows people to call their children for the first time.

Brian Heater [00:16:42] I want to say it was just the two of you at the time. Is that right?

Samantha Johnson [00:16:46] Yeah, we still are pretty small. We have six people full-time now at our office. We actually moved recently out of MassRobotics over to the Perkins School for the Blind, and they've created a kind of startup-in-residence space there. The Perkins School for the Blind has a renowned DeafBlind program, and they also have a lot of resources for DeafBlind individuals. So there's a really heavy prevalence of DeafBlind people in the area, which has been really helpful for us to get a lot of people in at all times to move us to that finish line of getting the product on the market.

Brian Heater [00:17:17] I assume you're the only startup in residence there right now?

Samantha Johnson [00:17:21] We are. We're the only one, but I think they have dreams of building that out, because there are so many assistive technology startups, and we're obviously not the only one - we're not even the only ones innovating for DeafBlind people. So I think it's really exciting. I think something we end up sort of showing is that you can have a startup in accessibility that makes money, that can grow and build and have technology, because when I first started this company five years ago and I would talk to angels or VCs, they took the meeting to be nice, and that was nice of them to do, and that was about it. They didn't really think that we could make a profit off of this product and still have the mission and the impact that we do.

Brian Heater [00:18:01] I'm sure they had the same reaction that I had when I was looking it up - I think, maybe my numbers are way off, but something like 1.5 million in the US, and something like 150 million across the world.

Samantha Johnson [00:18:16] Yeah, .2% of the population has deafblindness. It's actually just -

Brian Heater [00:18:20] So people just don't understand, and I think a big part of the reason why is because they're not out in the world.

Samantha Johnson [00:18:27] Right, so isolated. And I think something that's been really cool about our technology is it's helping their community become so much bigger. DeafBlind people are now able to make their own doctor's appointments. They're able to call extensions of friends and family and cousins, but they're also able to connect with each other, which has been really rewarding to see. A DeafBlind woman in Massachusetts called her DeafBlind friend in Connecticut, and they hadn't talked in 15 years, and suddenly they were able to have a phone call with each other.

Brian Heater [00:18:53] So they'd gone to school together?

Samantha Johnson [00:18:55] Growing up.

Brian Heater [00:18:55] That's wild.

Samantha Johnson [00:18:56] And then now they're able to have a phone call, and I think that's something that's really resonated - to have even just a connection with your own community, and also now being able to build your community out further. DeafBlind people have really resonated with that. We get calls - we basically have a call center at our office that helps facilitate these calls. The phones are ringing off the hook, you know?

Brian Heater [00:19:17] I understand why initially you were going the VC route - I mean, obviously, that's how startups get funded. And as you said, you are making money at it now. But ultimately, you did have to get grants, right? That's the way a product like this has to come into the world.

Samantha Johnson [00:19:36] 100%. And we're a hardware company - it costs money to make hardware at the end of the day. We've been very lucky. We've won many federal grants, state grants, and foundation grants to help us conduct this R&D and build these initial prototypes.

And being at MassRobotics for those first three years was really helpful. We didn't have to buy 3D printers - we didn't have to buy those kinds of capital equipment costs that go into hardware. We were able to get the resources we needed. I didn't take a salary for the first four and a half years, and that's okay. It allowed us to really stay focused. And a lot of the investors we talked to - I think we would've lost part of our mission along the way had we been successful on that route.

Brian Heater [00:20:17] You would've compromised.

Samantha Johnson [00:20:19] For sure. And that wasn't something me or my team was willing to do. We saw this problem, and we saw these people who were really passionate about getting a solution to having telecommunication access - as we all do, sitting here with a phone in your hand. Everyone deserves access to these simple luxuries.

Brian Heater [00:20:37] If you can say - what was one of the wildest suggestions you got in a pitch meeting?

Samantha Johnson [00:20:44] I think every pitch I gave told me to put the DeafBlind thing aside and do that later. They said, "Build a functional robotic hand for grippers, for any application, and then once you're successful, you can figure out how to use that for DeafBlind people."

Brian Heater [00:21:01] And that'll only take you 25 years.

Samantha Johnson [00:21:03] Exactly. That'll be quick - month and a half, you know? But I feel really glad that I stood firm and knew that wasn't the right answer. I didn't once consider, "You know, these people have been in the field for a long time - they probably know better." Because nobody knew the DeafBlind community the way that I did. I knew this problem. So I was able to stand firmly and say, "That's not the path we're going to take."

Brian Heater [00:21:25] Yeah, I mean, obviously they're thinking - you know, they're VCs, they're venture capitalists. They're thinking in purely monetary terms.

Samantha Johnson [00:21:32] For sure, and that's what they do, and it's great that people are able to find success through that route. It's also great that there are other options that allowed us to have a successful business and be so mission-focused.

Brian Heater [00:21:44] You were talking a little bit about mission creep before - what are some of these iterations that have been happening over time?

Samantha Johnson [00:21:51] Yeah, so when I started this as my thesis, the goal was to give news. That was the idea - news for DeafBlind people. DeafBlind people didn't have access to what was happening with the COVID pandemic. We needed DeafBlind people to have access to news.

And one day, a DeafBlind person came to visit my office, and he said, "Oh, well, which button will tell me the time?" I was like, "Oh, my gosh - the time." Just the most basic thing. Because he was telling me, "Well, if I take a nap and I wake up, I don't know if I was asleep for two hours or two days. I have absolutely no idea."

Brian Heater [00:22:17] These are the things you hear from somebody, and I don't know how to process that information.

Samantha Johnson [00:22:23] Right, and it's also - how do you not add that into the robot now? So you hear things like, "I want to be able to..." And I think calling was really what pushed this technology from being beneficial to being truly life-changing for people.

We have a DeafBlind man who has a robot - he's very young, and he calls his grandmother every day at 4:00, and he teases her. He makes jokes with her. He says, "I wore my PJs to class today - do you think that's a good idea?" And she says, "No." He's giggling, laughing on the phone. It's just being able to call your grandmother every day, or being able to connect with family.

I think that really was the piece that - checking the weather, checking the news, all these things are so beneficial and helpful, but having this connectivity is really what gave this product its life, you know?

Brian Heater [00:23:06] Yeah, and you did ultimately build a robot hand, and I'm curious what you've learned along the way about the actual building of it. Obviously this is a big problem, and you're not trying to build a universal hand - you're not trying to build a humanoid hand. But you must have discovered some fascinating stuff about human biology, or at least about trying to form metal actuators into something biological.

Samantha Johnson [00:23:35] Yeah, and I think that was funny when we were explaining this to DeafBlind people - why it was taking so long. I'm like, "Guys, this is not actually a solved problem yet." They haven't really made this low-cost, compliant robotic hand that I can just plop on - but that was actually my intention when I started this as my thesis. I wasn't a roboticist.

Brian Heater [00:23:49] You thought, like, off the shelf existed?

Samantha Johnson [00:23:51] That was absolutely my intention. There are so many robotic hands, and with my newfound printer, I started printing them out and building them and seeing what they could and couldn't do. And very quickly I realized - American Sign Language requires such a high level of dexterity, like between letters, to move between them. We can't use metal linkages - people's hands are going to be in them.

Brian Heater [00:24:11] Oh, you'd get pinch points.

Samantha Johnson [00:24:12] Especially pinch points. We can't be using all these traditional things, so suddenly we needed to workshop these critical problems in tendon-driven robotics - the lifetime friction, all of these problems that, again, aren't solved problems.

Brian Heater [00:24:25] So you were really pulling from something biologically inspired?

Samantha Johnson [00:24:28] Absolutely, and that's something I just started adding degrees of freedom to - that's essentially how I did it. So I took a five-degree-of-freedom hand, and it could do X, Y, Z. Okay, let's add another. Let's add another. We had abduction in a couple of fingers. Okay, we still can't make the differentiation between B and four - I guess all of the fingers need to have it. And we kept building up. We have anatomical models at our office. We were absolutely trying to create from what works, and it allows us to create a product that requires almost no learning curve. People put their hands on it, and they immediately know what it's saying because it mimics a human hand so closely.

Brian Heater [00:25:01] How long does it take somebody to get what it is the first time they experience it?

Samantha Johnson [00:25:07] The first time someone puts their hand on it, it moves, and you get a lot of, "Oh, my gosh, what is going on?"

Brian Heater [00:25:11] Well, I got that just out of the corner of my eye, just seeing it twitch. I got a little bit of that.

Samantha Johnson [00:25:14] Yeah. And it was fun - there was one DeafBlind woman who was using it for a little bit, and then she just jumped and threw her hands up, and I said, "What's up?" She said, "I forgot it was a robot. I thought it was a human." And I said, "Uh, thank you for that."

But it really is - I think it's something that happens so quickly, and because we've built it this way, the system is a hardware robot, but all of the software is cloud-based, so it allows us to have an infinite amount of customizations. We can make it move basically like their hand. We can make it slower, we can make it faster, we can customize the grammar, the hand shapes - to really make sure that there is this process where it feels like you.

Brian Heater [00:25:51] So, in terms of deployment, you just started shipping this, right?

Samantha Johnson [00:25:57] We did, yeah. We just started shipping at the end of Q4 of 2025. So there are only about 15 units out in the world right now, which is a lot for us, but not a lot in the scheme of robotics. But it's been really exciting - you learn so much. The first few go out, and you ask, what do we learn? What do we need to change?

I think we were all really excited - we got the first few orders, and people were using them. Every day, people go in and check the time, and check their notifications, and check the weather first thing every morning, just like we do. The more people are getting it, the more people are using it, the more organic interest we're getting from, "Oh, well, I know my sister needs this too." A lot of DeafBlind people come from families of DeafBlind people. So this one DeafBlind woman has the robot, and one of our trainers went out to visit her, and her DeafBlind sister was there, and she was teaching her sister how to use the robot.

So then they were working together on it, and that's exactly what you want to see - that she thought this was so beneficial to her, and now it can be beneficial to her family as well.

Brian Heater [00:26:55] I was looking at your LinkedIn, and the first person to get one is an ex-NASA engineer named Barry?

Samantha Johnson [00:27:03] Yes, Barry. Ex-NASA engineer - he was deaf for a long time, and they had a whole team of deaf engineers working at NASA, and he was part of that group. Then he lost his vision, and he's suddenly DeafBlind.

He doesn't know Braille, because most DeafBlind people who have acquired deafblindness become DeafBlind in their 40s, 50s, or 60s, and they can't learn Braille anymore. They might have neuropathy in their fingertips - it's just a completely new language for them. And he was part of this group of people who suddenly became so isolated. Somebody who's brilliant, witty, funny, and he was talking about how he can't even banter with his wife anymore, because he doesn't know what's going on in the world. "I need her for everything. I can't even have productive conversations."

He was one of the first people, and we've had so many stories like that. This one DeafBlind woman - she was deaf, and she lost her vision 40 years ago - she called her daughter for the first time using the robot, and she sat there the whole time, sobbing on the phone talking to her daughter, saying, "It's your mom. It's your mom on the phone." DeafBlind people are smart, they're excited, they're motivated to learn, and now we're just giving them the tools that let them do that.

Brian Heater [00:28:11] Yeah. He said he was having religious debates with -

Samantha Johnson [00:28:17] He loves to argue. He likes to debate, and now he can get what's going on in the world. He can read stories. He can poll other people about their perspectives.

Brian Heater [00:28:25] It sounds like it's a very specific deployment process, especially since it's still a relatively small number. So you're kind of going and customizing each of these for each person?

Samantha Johnson [00:28:37] Yeah, so basically the process is: someone gets the robot, and there's a user portal when you set it up, and you pick their customizations. This DeafBlind man - he got a robot, and he had never touched the robot before. He got the robot through a federal program that purchased it for him, and we did a two-hour training with him. After that, we left, and he made a 15-minute call to his grandma. Now he calls his grandmother - that's the first thing he does. Now he calls his friends, he checks the weather. He does it all by himself.

And anyone can set up the portal for them. You just pick their preferences, and then they're off to the races, and they can change it themselves at any time, too, once they have it. As many of them do, they get faster as they use it - they might start at two letters a second, and then three weeks later, they're like, "I'm getting good at this. I want it three letters a second." They can change it. They make it faster.

Brian Heater [00:29:19] The government purchasing program must be huge for you. That's a game changer, right?

Samantha Johnson [00:29:23] It's for sure - it's an incredible program, and it purchases telecommunication devices for DeafBlind people. And that is what we do.

Brian Heater [00:29:32] I mean, we were talking about this at the beginning of the conversation - it kind of sounded like there weren't other options. Are there other systems out there?

Samantha Johnson [00:29:42] Some DeafBlind people do know Braille, of course. If you have a professional Braille tablet, you could use that to connect to your phone. Some DeafBlind people with limited vision might use something like an iPad with really large print. So there are other technologies that DeafBlind people can access through these programs, and now this is just another tool that fits into that program. We didn't have to invent the program or anything, which is great - we just essentially fit into it.

Brian Heater [00:30:04] Something I'm always fascinated about is the technical-founder conversation. Obviously, you're a technical founder - you're coming from robotics, but you're also coming from science. But I suspect that for you, you've really had to learn every single step along the way - how to run a company, how to scale manufacturing, all of these different pieces.

Samantha Johnson [00:30:27] Yeah, I think the fun is that I get to learn something every day - I think that's the fun part. But absolutely, when I started, I do identify as a technical founder, despite my technical skills maybe not necessarily being in robotics, but they definitely were not in business. I'd never taken a business class. I wasn't necessarily entrepreneurial. So I needed to learn what a P&L was. I needed to learn how to put together a business plan. I needed to gain the trust of my customers. I needed to do all of these things.

We were so lucky to be part of MIT Solve, the MassRobotics Accelerator - these programs that help build up founders. I was at a conference once, and the founder of Square said, "If you're doing something truly new, no one's the expert." And I don't know why that really resonated with me, because when you first start a company and you don't have any of the skills to be doing what you're doing, you're like, "Oh, well, maybe somebody else should be doing this." But who really has skill in DeafBlind robotics? Probably nobody.

So it really has been such a journey. I feel very lucky to have the team we've had, that we're all learning together. And it's probably almost for the best that we're all learning together, because we didn't come in with these preconceived notions of what anthropomorphic robotics should look like. We were able to really just focus on the perspectives and the feedback of the DeafBlind people and build that, instead of building what we thought was correct - humanoid robotics.

Brian Heater [00:31:42] Yeah, it is an interesting point. Obviously there are all these stories in technology about founders in their garage, but I think there's also a lot of power in not having any set expectations and starting there, and not even thinking that you were going to launch a company. Maybe you were taking risks that you might not have taken otherwise.

Samantha Johnson [00:32:07] Absolutely. And I think those month-and-a-half milestones I was setting for myself - maybe we didn't accomplish a ton, but we accomplished something because we set these unrealistic goals. It allowed us to move really fast - let's throw something together, they're coming anyway, let's put something together for them to test, let's test everything we can while they're here.

So it really set us up to be this organization that's just kind of building what people are telling us to build, and that's what we did from really early on. Even when it was a kind of unrealistic idea - like, let's build a tendon-driven robotic hand out of 3D-printed materials that can last for three years - okay, let's figure out how to do that, you know? It's been a fun process along the way, to do it with the people we're designing for.

Brian Heater [00:32:49] It sounds like you do have to continue to be really deliberate when it comes to scale and the people that you're hiring. It's a six-person company at this point?

Samantha Johnson [00:33:00] Yeah, we have our full-time team, but we also have DeafBlind consultants who come in every week. We have a whole advisory board of DeafBlind people from across the country - across the world, really - who are advising us as we're building this, to ensure that it's not just beneficial for one person.

And I think as we're scaling, that's also been something I've spent a lot of time talking to people about - how to do this purposefully, because again, we're a small team. If we got an order for 100 robots, that would take some time. We're building this all in-house, so how can we ensure the people getting this to start are the ones who are going to benefit from it the most, and also give us the time to build up our operations?

Brian Heater [00:33:37] Is that sort of an anticipation, or an expectation, that at some point, as you're scaling, an order for 100 robots is going to come in?

Samantha Johnson [00:33:46] Well, luckily - or unluckily, whatever you want to call it - with this federal program, it's not something they're going to buy 100 of at once. They buy per person. So if 100 people requested one, it would still come in on a one-per-one basis. What we're trying to do right now is essentially grow per region. We're looking to support people in New England right now, and now we're branching out to a second and third region, so that as we're building, we can ensure that people putting in orders aren't waiting a year to get it. We can build it and get it to them in a reasonable amount of time.

Brian Heater [00:34:20] And these are assembled completely on-site?

Samantha Johnson [00:34:23] Yep. We build it all - we print everything, we assemble it, we tension it, we do everything. I sew the gloves at the office. We do it all.

Brian Heater [00:34:30] So what are the tendons made out of?

Samantha Johnson [00:34:33] It's a stainless-steel, nylon-coated tendon.

Brian Heater [00:34:36] Okay.

Samantha Johnson [00:34:36] Yeah. It's funny - it's been really cool to see what decisions I made in my thesis, not knowing anything about robotics a long time ago, and which decisions are still true today. That tendon material we used, we still use. The material for the hand, we used, and we still use. And then there are the things that have vastly changed - that's been a really interesting thing to monitor along the way.

Brian Heater [00:35:01] It sounds like largely the changes you've made are based on user feedback.

Samantha Johnson [00:35:06] 100%. For example, I'm sure when you saw it last, this box that the robot sat on was huge - like a tub. We used to call it the tub because it was huge. And everybody at robotics events was like, "You've got to make that smaller." I was like, "It doesn't have to be smaller - they can't see it. It's fine."

And then we gave it to DeafBlind people for a beta, and when we went to pick them up, they each had a stack of books they were resting their arm on, because it was too tall.

Brian Heater [00:35:33] Tall, yeah.

Samantha Johnson [00:35:33] And we were like, "Okay, we'll make it smaller." That motivated us - now it's a problem. Before, it was just a suggestion; now we were getting feedback that it needed to be smaller, so we prioritized it.

Brian Heater [00:35:45] And you're just continuing to iterate on it all the time?

Samantha Johnson [00:35:48] Yep, so now that it's a product out in the world, we're making smaller improvements as we see the need. But we actually got our Phase Two NSF grant, which is going to allow us to build our next product - a whole arm that does more complex signing. This is our finger-spelling hand, so for American Sign Language - any sign language - you have the letters A, B, C, D, E, F, but you also have a whole vocabulary of signs. "Hi, my name's Sam." This robot will do, "Hi, my name Sam." So it's really going to allow us to encapsulate the language.

Brian Heater [00:36:18] How different of a problem is that, when it comes to actually building a robot to do the full arm?

Samantha Johnson [00:36:24] The difference is really the safety that comes into it. This is inherently safe - it's all TPU, you're not going to get hurt while using it. But now you have an arm that's moving in the space of DeafBlind people. So that's where a lot of that work comes in - the compliance and the controls of that system.

Brian Heater [00:36:42] Yeah, because obviously they can't see, so they don't know how it's moving, and they're not aware of their surroundings.

Samantha Johnson [00:36:49] Right. And the safety standards for collaborative robotics are new. It was funny - I remember looking at this a few years ago, and the first rule was, "Stay six feet away." And it's like, well, they're not going to be staying six feet away - they'll be holding onto it. But these DeafBlind people, they have no fear. They're like, "It hits me when it hits me - we'll work through it," you know?

Brian Heater [00:37:11] Yeah, I've been through worse.

Samantha Johnson [00:37:12] Yeah. And it's fun to see. It's also interesting what matters and what doesn't matter, and that's been exciting to learn - what they care a lot about and what they care nothing about. What we learned is DeafBlind people really care about the color of the glove. They can't see it, but they have a favorite color, they have a preference, and they want it personalized to them. We have one DeafBlind woman with a cheetah-print, rainbow glove, because it fits her personality. She said, "I want a super fun glove." And we said, "Okay. Let's make it for you."

Brian Heater [00:37:40] I was going to ask what things look like moving forward, but it sounds like the focus continues to be on the audience - but building potentially new products for that space.

Samantha Johnson [00:37:56] That space. I think what I also see is - right now we've been really heavily prioritizing DeafBlind people in their homes, where they can't tell the time, where they're not surrounded by other people who can support them. But we're also working with the Museum of Science to see how this can be used to make the Museum of Science more accessible, or working with other healthcare applications to see how this can make digital health equity - how can we make a patient portal accessible? How can we make having a doctor's appointment more accessible? So there are all of these ways that, definitely, people in their homes need support, but it doesn't end in their homes. We're investigating, as we're building more products, where these other applications are that would help improve DeafBlind people's experience.

Brian Heater [00:38:36] So it's not just like dropping that in somebody's home and then, "All right, see ya."

Samantha Johnson [00:38:40] Right. Right. And what's really great about having this in people's homes first is now they know how to use it. So when they go to the emergency room and one is sitting there, they know what to do - they know how to make calls and relay their problems effectively.

Brian Heater [00:38:56] Do you feel like generally things are improving when it comes to launching an accessibility startup?

Samantha Johnson [00:39:04] Yes. I think it's improving for a number of reasons. One, I think you can build something at a lower cost of entry, which I think is so important for accessibility.

Brian Heater [00:39:13] But that's more of just a hardware manufacturing thing.

Samantha Johnson [00:39:16] Hardware. Yeah, but I think what's really important about that is because you can build it at a lower cost of entry, you can start getting feedback from the populations you need. I think a lot of accessibility products for a long time - you couldn't get feedback from the people you were designing for until it was already too late, and as a result, accessibility solutions would come out that weren't providing benefit to people.

And now you can get people in the room at such an early stage, and people are prioritizing that. As I mentioned, Perkins launched this whole center, the Perkins Innovation Center, and they're working with McKinsey to get detailed reports on what the market size looks like, which didn't always exist - what programs are available, and why you can have a company that's successful in accessibility.

Brian Heater [00:39:55] Well, I really appreciate you taking the time, and it's really cool to see your progress.

Samantha Johnson [00:39:58] Of course. Thanks so much for having me.

Brian Heater [00:40:00] Thank you. Thank you so much to Samantha and the team at MassRobotics for setting that up.

Thanks to you, as always, for sticking around and listening and/or watching the show. If you are a fan, you can support us by liking and subscribing on the platform of your choice, and subscribing to our newsletter over at automated.fm. And with all of that, we will see you next week for another episode of Automated.