Barrett Technology

Newton, Massachusetts, USA-based Barrett Technology was incorporated by William T. Townsend in 1990.^[1] Barrett manufactures robotic arms and hands installed in 20 countries on 6 continents. Barrett is credited in The Guinness Book of World Records, Millennium Edition, as maker of the world’s “most advanced robotic arm.”^[2] Its 7-axis robotic arm, named the WAM arm for Whole Arm Manipulation^[3] is based on Puck electronics^[4] and mechanical^[5][6][7] drive technologies and designed to interact directly with people.^[3][8] One application of an early version of the technology has been the arm manufactured and sold by MAKO Surgical Corp. which enables haptically-guided minimally-invasive knee surgery.^[9]

Barrett Technology Inc.

Industry	Robotics
Founded	Cambridge, Massachusetts (1988 (1988))
Founder	William Townsend
Headquarters	73 Chapel Street, Newton, Massachusetts , United States
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	William T. Townsend
Products	WAM Robotic Arm, BarrettHand
Website	Barrett.com

The Puck powered BarrettHand BH8-series product is based on technology licensed from the University of Pennsylvania^[10][11] and developed by Gill Pratt, Yoky Matsuoka, and William Townsend^[12] into its present form.

Company history

Date	Event
1982–1984	Townsend works in Massachusetts Institute of Technology's "motor" lab (LEES) where novel servomotor CMOS-FET configurations/algorithms are being developed
1987	Research team at MIT invents cable-differential drive, high-speed cable drive, and haptic (WAM) robotic arm
1990	Barrett Technology, Inc. incorporated
1991	Barrett markets brushless motor with integrated drive electronics
1992	US Patents[5][6] issued on cable-drive technologies
1993	Barrett builds first BarrettHand prototype, combining Barrett and UPenn technologies[10][11]
1995	US Patent[7] issued on a manual cable pretensioner
1997	Barrett secures exclusive worldwide control of the WAM cable-drive patents[5][6] from MIT
1998	Barrett signs exclusive license deal with MAKO Surgical Corp. for medical applications
2001	Burt Doo becomes Barrett's Operations Chief and invests in the Company
2002	Covert work begins on Puck development
2004	Barrett builds first puck-based prototype WAM for NASA-JSC
2005	MAKO Surgical Corp. wins U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval to market a modified WAM for knee surgery
2006	MAKO begins shipping its version of the WAM for knee surgery under license from Barrett
2007	US Patent[12] awarded for Hand with integrated "Palm" camera
2007	Barrett begins work on next-generation Puck, code-named "P3" and expected to be released in 2012
2009	US Patent[4] awarded on the Puck, other patents pending internationally

Sources

Rooks, Brian, "The harmonious robot" (PDF), Industrial Robot, archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-11-19, retrieved 2010-06-07

Smith, Julian (23 March 2007), "Can Robots Be Programmed to Learn from Their Own Experiences?", Scientific American