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 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 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 edit this section contains embedded lists that may be better presented using prose . you can help by converting the list or lists to prose if appropriate . editing help is available . june 2010 learn how and when to remove this template message 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 edit rooks brian the harmonious robot pdf industrial robot smith julian 23 march 2007 can robots be programmed to learn from their own experiences scientific american references edit barrett technology inc. company information kynaston nic 2000 . guinness world records millennium edition . london uk guinness media inc. pp. 170 171 . isbn 1 892051 00 1 . a b us patent 5207114 j. kenneth salisbury jr. cambridge ma william t. townsend somerville ma & william t. townsend compact cable transmission with cable differential issued 1993 05 04 assigned to massachusetts institute of technology cambridge ma a b us patent 7511443 william t. townsend weston ma adam crowell beverly ma gill pratt lexington ma traveler hauptman watertown ma ; adam crowell & gill pratt et al. ultra compact high performance motor controller and method of using same issued 2009 03 31 assigned to barrett technology inc. cambridge ma a b c us patent 4903536 j. kenneth salisbury jr. cambridge ma william t. townsend somerville ma david m. dipietro webster ny brian s. eberman rochester mn ; william t. townsend & david m. dipietro et al. compact cable transmission with cable differential issued 1990 02 27 assigned to massachusetts institute of technology cambridge ma a b c us patent 5046375 j. kenneth salisbury jr. cambridge ma william t. townsend somerville ma david m. dipietro webster ny brian s. eberman rochester mn ; william t. townsend & david m. dipietro et al. compact cable transmission with cable differential issued 1991 09 10 assigned to massachusetts institute of technology cambridge ma a b us patent 5388480 william t. townsend weston ma pretensioning mechanism for tension element drive systems issued 1995 02 14 assigned to barrett technology inc. cambridge ma the science of innovation . nsf current mailing list . june 2009 . retrieved 7 june 2010 . robotics offer newfound surgical capabilities . embedded technology . 17 april 2009 . retrieved 6 june 2010 . a b us patent 4957320 nathan t. ulrich philadelphia pa methods and apparatus for mechanically intelligent grasping issued 1990 09 18 assigned to trustees of the university of pennsylvania philadelphia pa a b us patent 5501498 nathan t. ulrich philadelphia pa methods and apparatus for mechanically intelligent grasping issued 1996 03 26 assigned to trustees of the university of pennsylvania philadelphia pa a b us patent 7168748 william t. townsend weston ma traveler hauptman cambridge ma adam crowell beverly ma brian zenowich boston ma john lawson petersboro ma vitaliy krutik lynn ma burt doo cambridge ma ; traveler hauptman & adam crowell et al. intelligent self contained robotic hand issued 1996 03 26 assigned to barrett technology inc. cambridge ma companies portal retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title barrett technology & oldid 689943309 categories manufacturing companies based in massachusettsrobotics companies of the united stateshidden categories articles needing cleanup from june 2010all pages needing cleanuparticles with sections that need to be turned into prose from june 2010 navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages add links this page was last modified on 10 november 2015 at 10 09 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; 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