Robots for Good: A Conversation with Tatum Robotics

Imagine needing another person’s hand just to check the weather, news, or even to listen to a podcast. That’s the everyday reality for many DeafBlind people and the starting point for Samantha Johnson’s bold solution: a soft robotic hand that fingerspells tactile sign language and turns digital text into language you can feel.We sit down with Samantha to trace the journey from a Northeastern University ASL course to founding Tatum Robotics, a social impact startup bringing assistive devices into real homes. She explains how her team engineered an 18-DOF hand that is both precise and gentle, and why co-designing with DeafBlind users consistently beats feature creep. We are also joined by Jaimi Lard of Tatum Q&A for a live demo of the device and firsthand user feedback.If you care about accessibility, human-centered design, and robotics for good, this conversation will recalibrate what meaningful inclusion looks like.