Bill Townsend founded Barrett Technology in 1988. He is credited with introducing the WAMî arm, the first haptic robot and one of the first haptic devices based on novel differential and high-speed cable drives.
Bill obtained his MS and PhD degrees in Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1984 and 1988 respectively. He received a BS in 1982 from Northeastern University. He has been awarded nineteen US patents with non-US equivalents and won several professional awards including The Robotics Industries AssociationâÂÂs Joseph Engelberger Award in 2003 for pioneering the first haptic robot in the 1980s.