Press Releases 2005

November 30, 2005

Barrett Technology Introduces the New WAM™ arm in Asia

Barrett Technology Introduced the New WAM™ arm at the International Robot Exhibition (IRE2005) in Tokyo to a record crowd. According to Barrett CEO Bill Townsend, "Barrett began its product business in Asia and has always done well here. But the reaction this year is truly stunning."

August 30, 2005

Bill Townsend, invited to speak on the future of advanced robot design

Barrett CEO, Bill Townsend, invited to speak on the future of advanced robot design at the 2nd annual International School of Robotics Science (ISRS2005) in Tokyo, to be held the week of 18-September-2005.

 

April 18, 2005

Barrett Presents the improved WAM™ arm at ICRA'05

Barrett Presents the New WAM™ arm at IEEE's largest annual robotics conference, the IEEE 2005 International Conference on Robotics and Automation. This year the event will be held in Barcelona, Spain; and will emphasize Barrett's theme of "Robots get closer to humans."

Barrett's WAM™ arm is the world leader in advanced human-compatible robots, so Barrett's exhibition in Spain will be a highlight of the conference. Applications with Barrett's WAM™ arm range from minimally-invasive hand-in-hand operations at Mako Surgical and error-augmentation stroke rehabilitation at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

According to Barrett's CEO, Bill Townsend, "our systems have been collaborating with people since the early 1990s, long before this type of interaction was considered feasible. At the heart of our patented systems is inherent "backdrivability," where the arm responds to a person's feather touch anywhere along its moving surfaces." Arms that rely on explicit force/torque sensors at the end-effector only feel forces-torques at the last 5 or 10% of the robot surface and fail to protect users from the 90% of the robot that is unaware of collisions.

January 19, 2005

Barrett Re-Introduces the WAM™ arm

The world’s most advanced robotic arm pushes the envelope even further.

Three years and US$2million in development have resulted in the best WAM™ arm ever. Initial units are being shipped to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The Boeing Company, Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, Department of Energy, the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Alberta for applications ranging from stroke-patient rehabilitation to rover-mounted mobile manipulation.

After 15 years of incremental improvements to the WAM™ arm, Barrett has dramatically redesigned the WAM™ arm. The WAM™ arm is now the world’s lightest robotic arm of its reach and payload. It has the lowest power consumption of any comparable robotic arm. And, it has the smallest controller cabinet of any comparable robotic arm.

The highly advanced WAM™ robotic arm was introduced in 1988 by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This design led to many firsts in robotics including the first haptic device (designed to interact with people by creating virtual objects and surfaces). The University of Tokyo has also made the WAM™ arm the first arm (robotic or otherwise) to achieve an 800 batting average.

According to Barrett CEO, Bill Townsend, “this was the company’s biggest challenge ever. We wanted to take manipulator robotics to a new level by contributing fundamentally new motor technology to the field, and I think we have achieved that.”

For further information and a DVD of the new WAM™ arm, please contact Ms. Laurie Vanelli at US+617-252-9000 Ex21, robot@barrett.com