Tatum's Robot Hand is Helping Connect the Deafblind Community

When custom gloves got too expensive, Samantha Johnson taught herself how to sew. Much of her role as CEO of Tatum Robotics has played out similarly since the startup spun out of a student thesis at the height of the pandemic. 

“I was a bit ambitious, I will say,” Johnson tells me. “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. I could get a 3D printer and just print and print and print and figure out what I was doing.” 

Johnson’s higher ed journey began with wet lab work, but a desire to address accessibility brought her into the robotics fold. “I got into robotics not necessarily because of the robotics themselves, but because of what they could do,” she explains. “I saw this problem of deafblind people can't communicate and thought robotics could be the solution to that. And that's sort of how I found my way to robotics.” 

Deafblindness — a combination of profound sight and hearing loss — is believed to impact around 0.2% of the global population. Those with the condition rely on their sense of touch for communication, utilizing a tactile form of sign language that requires another person in immediate proximity. When the pandemic forced institutions to social distance, much of the community lost access to this vital means of communication — many suddenly and without explanation. 

After determining that no off-the-shelf robot hand would fit her needs, Johnson threw herself into robotics in order to build a tactile sign language communication device. The design required elements like flexible tendons not regularly found on industrial effector systems.  

“Who really has skills in deafblind robotics?” she rhetorically posits. “Probably nobody. It really has been such a journey, and I feel very lucky to have the team that we've had surrounded, that we're all learning together.” 

Johnson adds that she didn’t embark on the robot hand project with any commercial ambitions in mind. Interest from the Canadian National Institute for the Blind prior to graduation helped nudge her in that direction.  

“I wasn't necessarily entrepreneurial,” she says. “I needed to learn what a P&L was. I need to learn how to put together a business plan. I needed to do all these things. I needed to gain the trust of my customers. I needed to do all these things.” 

Foundations and grants have played a key role in Tatum’s growth. VCs, while willing to take meetings, have regularly urged Johnson to focus on something more lucrative than servicing the deafblind, but Tatum has remained true to the community, building a system that shares the day’s news, keeps them in contact with loved ones, and more. Additions include potential content deals and a new version of the communication device that contains a robot arm for more complex and nuanced communication.  

After a few years of iteration and testing, the startup shipped its first Tatum1 device in Q4 of last year.  e

“There's 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,” says Johnson. “It’s been really exciting to learn so much. The first go out, and what we need to change? These people are using them every day.” 

Among the more unexpected learnings is that customers are very particular about the gloves Johnson sews.  

“What we learned is that deafblind people really care about the color of the glove,” she says. “They can't see it but they have a favorite color preference and they want it personalized to them. We have one deafblind woman who’s got this cheetah print rainbow glove. It fits her personality.”