William T. Townsend

Bill Townsend founded Barrett Technology in 1988. He is credited with introducing the WAM® 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 Association’s Joseph Engelberger Award in 2003 for pioneering the first haptic robot in the 1980s.