The Brain and Power Behind the Machines

Bill Townsend, PhD - President & CEO Bill Townsend has fostered an exceptional team culture that is leading Barrett into the future with a robust product pipeline. Bill founded Barrett in 1988 with early funding from investor, Julianne Barrett. The company has pioneered world-class drive technologies that are at the heart of any robot: unmatched servomotor controllers and high-performance (gearless) transmissions. These two technologies have led to robotic arms and hands with exceptional grace and responsiveness.

Bill has 20 patents worldwide with licenses to companies like MAKO/Stryker Medical. Bill won the prestigious Joseph Engelberger Award for his 1987 design of the first haptics-capable robot, named the WAM® arm and credited in the Millennium Edition of Guinness World Records (p170-171) as the “most advanced robotic arm”.

He earned his PhD and MS degrees in engineering at the MIT AI Lab (now CSAIL), with a minor in business, attended at the Sloan School of Management and the Harvard Business School. Finally, the 5-year BS Coop program at Northeastern University exposed Bill to industry early in his career.