Barrett Technology
Barrett Technology builds FDA-cleared rehabilitation robots and high-performance robotic arms and grippers powered by its proprietary Puck brushless servomotor controllers, selling to hospitals, research labs, and industrial automation customers across 30 countries.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded1988
- HeadquartersNewton, United States
- Headcount11–50
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingHardware or Manufacturing
What Barrett Technology does
Barrett Technology, LLC is a privately held robotics company founded in 1988 by Bill Townsend as a spinout from MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, headquartered in Newton, Massachusetts. The company operates two divisions unified by its proprietary Puck® brushless servomotor controller technology: Barrett Medical, which sells the Burt® FDA Class-II upper-extremity rehabilitation robot to hospitals and rehabilitation facilities, and Barrett Drive Systems, which sells the Puck controller, WAM® robotic arm, and BarrettHand™ multi-fingered grasper to research institutions and industrial automation customers. The Puck — described by the company as the world's most compact brushless servomotor controller — integrates high-performance control, sensing, and communication directly at each motor, enabling a "Transparent Dynamics" architecture that allows force control without external force/torque sensors. This technology underpins the WAM arm (the first human-interactive robotic arm, recognized by Guinness World Records in 2000 and by DARPA's ARM program in 2010) and the Burt rehabilitation system (ISO-13485 manufacturing, IEC 60601-1 approved).
Barrett Technology firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Barrett Technology
- Legal name
- Barrett Technology, LLC
- Website
- https://barrett.com
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 1988
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 11–50 employees
- Short description
- Barrett Technology builds FDA-cleared rehabilitation robots and high-performance robotic arms and grippers powered by its proprietary Puck brushless servomotor controllers, selling to hospitals, research labs, and industrial automation customers across 30 countries.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Barrett Technology industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Medical Robotics
- NAICS
- Electromedical and Electrotherapeutic Apparatus Manufacturing (334510)
- SIC
- Electromedical & Electrotherapeutic Apparatus (3845)
- akta.pro primary industry
- Healthcare & Assistive Robotics (HDAAAIAC)
- akta.pro secondary industries
- Robot Hardware, Actuators & Components (sensors, grippers, motors) (HDAAAIAL), Industrial Robots (Articulated, SCARA, Delta, Cartesian) (IMAHAHAA)
Keywords
Where Barrett Technology is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- Newton
- HQ country
- United States
- HQ region
- North America
Offices1 record
Markets served
Barrett Technology business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Hardware or Manufacturing
- Cost components
- Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure, Supply Chain, Others
Revenue model
- Puck® Motor Controller Sales: Sale of Puck brushless servomotor controllers and related development kits, motor interface boards, and accessories through direct e-commerce store and authorized resellers.
- Burt® Robotic System Sales: Sale of FDA Class-II certified Burt rehabilitation robot systems to hospitals and rehabilitation facilities for patient therapy.
- BurtCare™ Subscription: Annual subscription service for Burt customers including extended warranty, maintenance, software updates with new activities/assessments, and marketing support. Most customers opt into this service.
- Motor Tuning Service: Professional service where Barrett engineers tune Puck for customer-provided motors and provide configuration files.
- WAM® Arm and BarrettHand™ Sales: Sale of WAM robotic arms and BarrettHand grippers to research institutions and industrial automation customers.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Unit Pricing | Pay-as-you-go | Puck P4-16 single unit |
| Unit Pricing | Pay-as-you-go | Puck P4-37 single unit |
| Unit Pricing | Pay-as-you-go | Puck P4-16 Development Kit |
| Unit Pricing | Pay-as-you-go | Puck Development Board |
| Unit Pricing | Pay-as-you-go | 16mm Motor Interface Board |
| Unit Pricing | Pay-as-you-go | 40mm Motor Interface Board |
| Other | Pay-as-you-go | Motor Tuning Service |
| Unit Pricing | Pay-as-you-go | EC-Max 16 with Puck bundle |
| Unit Pricing | Pay-as-you-go | BYO Motor Puck Development Kit |
| Subscription | Annual | BurtCare Subscription |
Go-to-market motion2 records
Distribution channels3 records
Marketing channels5 records
Barrett Technology product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Barrett Technology designs, manufactures, and sells robots intended to work closely with people, organized into two divisions. Barrett Medical sells the FDA Class-II Burt® upper-extremity rehabilitation robot, an ISO-13485-manufactured system that delivers gamified, repetitive therapy for patients recovering from neurological and musculoskeletal conditions. Barrett Drive Systems sells the Puck® brushless servomotor controllers (P4-16 and P4-37), the WAM® highly dexterous backdrivable robotic arm, and the BarrettHand™ multi-fingered programmable grasper, along with developer kits, accessories, and a motor-tuning service for research and industrial automation customers.
Product overview
Barrett Technology operates two distinct divisions — Barrett Medical and Barrett Drive Systems — unified by core Puck motor control technology. Barrett Medical offers the FDA Class-II Burt upper-extremity rehabilitation robot, powered by Puck-enabled P4 motor controllers and bundled with therapy game suites including BurtAssist, BurtResist, and IADL activities (LaundryLoader, DesertDriver, BurtBilliards, TrailMaker, CatchMaster, FishFood, FlyingEagle, Teach&Trace). BurtCare provides annual subscription support. Barrett Drive Systems supplies the Puck family of brushless servomotor controllers (P4-16 and P4-37), the WAM arm, and the BarrettHand multi-fingered grasper — all programmable via the open-architecture libbarrett C++ library. Barrett holds multiple US patents on Puck and Burt technology.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Brands
- Burt®: FDA Class-II (Puck®-enabled) robotic device designed and manufactured in an ISO-13485-certified facility to accelerate hospital patients' recovery from neuro trauma, neurodegenerative diseases, and musculoskeletal conditions.
- Puck®
- WAM®
- BarrettHand™
- BurtCare™
- BurtChampion™
Products and services
- Burt® Upper-Extremity Rehabilitation Robot FDA Class-II upper-extremity rehabilitation robotic system designed and manufactured in an ISO-13485-certified facility to accelerate hospital patients' recovery from neuro trauma, neurodegenerative diseases, and musculoskeletal conditions. Puck-enabled with adaptive therapy games and activities targeting impairments from neurological, orthopedic, visual, and cognitive challenges.
- Puck® Brushless Servomotor Controller World's most compact brushless servomotor controller with embedded high-performance control, sensing, and communication at the motor. Available as P4-16 ($499 per unit) for smaller motors and P4-37 ($599 per unit) for medium-sized motors, powering all Barrett robots with gearless drives.
- WAM® Robotic Arm A highly dexterous, naturally backdrivable robotic manipulator and the world's first human-interactive robotic arm, credited by Guinness World Records in 2000 as the 'most advanced robotic arm.' Available in 4-DOF and 7-DOF configurations with human-like kinematics, near-zero friction, and direct-drive capability enabled by Transparent Dynamics. Sold to research institutions and industrial automation customers.
- BarrettHand™ Programmable Grasper Multi-fingered programmable grasper with three multi-jointed fingers (two with 180-degree lateral mobility) and the BH8-282 model offering eight axes of motion. Self-contained with onboard communications, servo-controllers, and brushless motors, enabling rapid electronic reconfiguration to adapt to different part shapes within half a second without tool changes.
- BurtCare™ Annual Subscription Service Annual subscription service (one year included with every new Burt purchase) providing extended warranty, annual preventative maintenance, twice-yearly new activities and assessments, an annual professional day, the BurtChampion™ recognition program, and marketing support. Most Burt customers opt into subsequent-year renewals.
- Motor Tuning Service $2,000 professional service in which Barrett engineers tune the Puck® motor controller for a customer-provided motor and return a ready-to-use configuration file. Requires motor datasheet and physical motor sample (returned after tuning).
- libbarrett Real-Time Controls Library Free real-time controls library written in C++ that runs Barrett products including the WAM Arm and BarrettHand. Provides high-level interfaces (initialize the Hand, move the WAM to a position in joint-space) and low-level interfaces (torque calculations in hard real-time). Distributed under GNU General Public License.
- Puck® Development Kits & Accessories Puck P4-16 Development Kit ($3,950), Bring-Your-Own-Motor Puck Development Kit ($2,950), 16mm and 40mm Motor Interface Boards ($149 each), Puck Development Board ($950), and EC-Max 16 with Puck bundle ($1,600). Customers purchasing a BYO motor kit ship their motor to Barrett for tuning as part of the service.
Quantifiable outcome
- DARPA selected WAM and BarrettHand for ARM program, purchasing 14 systems
- +2 more outcomes
Companies that use Barrett Technology
Customer profileNamed customers3 records
Segments3 records
Ideal customer profiles3 records
Barrett Technology technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- No
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Feature5 records
Barrett Technology partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Nine partnerships are on record, tiered regional, core, major and minor.
- Otto Bock South East AsiaregionalWill present Burt at WFOT Congress 2026 in Bangkok, representing Barrett Medical in Southeast Asia region.
- Healing InnovationscoreTeams up with Barrett Medical to increase access to rehabilitation technology. Healing Innovations offers the Rise&Walk product, which is featured alongside Burt on Barrett's website under Medical products.
- Spaulding Rehabilitation HospitalmajorCollaboration on $2M NIH grant to develop SmartAssist technology - an add-on to Burt robotic trainer for stroke and neurological injury recovery. Aims to create real-time adaptive assistance system to improve patient engagement and therapy effectiveness.
- SensAble TechnologyminorLicensed WAM technology for PhanTom and Omni haptic device products.
- MAKO SurgicalcoreLicensed WAM arm for RIO surgical robot. MAKO was subsequently purchased by Stryker for $1.6B based on the WAM-enabled RIO robot.
- Estun (China)regionalAuthorized reseller for Puck products in China. Located at 16 Shuige Road, Jiangning District, Nanjing.
- Robotnik (Spain)regionalAuthorized reseller for Puck products in Europe. Located at Ronda Auguste y Louis Lumiere, 6-8, Paterna, Valencia, Spain.
- WKP Machines Co. (Korea)regionalAuthorized reseller for Puck products in Korea. Located in Seoul.
- Nihon-Binary Co., Ltd. (Japan)regionalAuthorized reseller for Puck products in Japan. Located in Tokyo.
Scale indicators5 records
Recent moves6 records
Expansion highlights5 records
Barrett Technology competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- Tyromotion: Tyromotion produces the Amadeo finger-rehabilitation system and Pablo multi-axis therapy device, which directly compete with Barrett's Burt upper-extremity rehabilitation robot in clinical settings, serving the same neurological and orthopedic patient populations.
- Bionik Laboratories: Bionik's InMotion ARM and InMotion WRIST are clinical upper-extremity rehabilitation robots that compete against Barrett's Burt in hospitals and outpatient rehabilitation centers, addressing the same stroke and neuro-injury recovery market.
- Ekso Bionics: Ekso Bionics develops the Ekso GT exoskeleton and EksoNR neurorehabilitation device, and competes with Barrett for hospital and rehabilitation-facility capital budgets serving stroke and spinal-cord-injury patients.
- KINOVA Robotics: KINOVA's JACO and Gen3 lightweight robotic arms serve research, assistive, and medical applications highly comparable to Barrett's WAM arm and target overlapping customers in university research labs and clinical robotics.
- Franka Emika: Franka Emika's FR3 and Panda backdrivable robot arms serve research and human-interactive robotics applications comparable to Barrett's WAM arm, competing for the same academic, AI, and human-robot-interaction research customers.
- Bioness Inc. Bioness (founded by former Bioness leaders now at Barrett such as CCO Matt Rigby) sells H200 Wireless and L300 Go functional electrical stimulation devices that target the same upper- and lower-extremity rehabilitation market served by Barrett's Burt.
- Hocoma (DIH Medical): Hocoma (now part of DIH) sells Armeo Power, Armeo Spring, and Armeo Boom upper-extremity rehabilitation robots that compete head-to-head with Barrett's Burt in hospitals and rehabilitation facilities, targeting the same patient populations and clinical indications.
Broad incumbents
- Universal Robots: Universal Robots dominates the collaborative industrial robot market with UR3e/UR5e/UR10e/UR20 arms, occupying a broader industrial-automation footprint than Barrett's WAM which is used primarily in research and flexible-manipulation applications.
- SCHUNK: SCHUNK is a major German manufacturer of robot grippers, actuators, and force/torque sensors that competes with Barrett's BarrettHand gripper and 6-axis force/torque sensor in research and industrial-automation end-effector markets.
Emerging players
- Robotiq: Robotiq offers adaptive grippers, force-torque sensors, and vision systems for collaborative robots, serving a similar end-effector niche as Barrett's BarrettHand BH8-Series with focus on plug-and-play cobot integration rather than research-grade dexterity.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat6 records
Key risks6 records
Key highlights6 records
Customer concentration
Barrett Technology social profiles
Digital presenceBarrett Technology compliance and trust
Trust signalCompliance3 records
Barrett Technology financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Barrett Technology leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles6 records
Barrett Technology funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds4 records
Investors5 records
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Barrett Technology M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Barrett Technology
What does Barrett Technology do?
Barrett Technology designs, manufactures, and sells robots intended to work closely with people, organized into two divisions. Barrett Medical sells the FDA Class-II Burt® upper-extremity rehabilitation robot, an ISO-13485-manufactured system that delivers gamified, repetitive therapy for patients recovering from neurological and musculoskeletal conditions. Barrett Drive Systems sells the Puck® brushless servomotor controllers (P4-16 and P4-37), the WAM® highly dexterous backdrivable robotic arm, and the BarrettHand™ multi-fingered programmable grasper, along with developer kits, accessories, and a motor-tuning service for research and industrial automation customers.
Is Barrett Technology a public or private company?
Barrett Technology is a private company. It is classified as founder individual operated bootstrapped and is currently operating.
When was Barrett Technology founded?
Barrett Technology was founded in 1988. It employs 11 to 50 people.
Where is Barrett Technology based?
Barrett Technology is headquartered in Newton, United States, in the North America region.
How does Barrett Technology make money?
Five revenue lines are on record. Puck® Motor Controller Sales are the primary driver. The others are burt® Robotic System Sales, burtCare™ Subscription, motor Tuning Service and WAM® Arm and BarrettHand™ Sales.
Who are Barrett Technology's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are Tyromotion, Bionik Laboratories, Ekso Bionics, KINOVA Robotics, Franka Emika, Bioness Inc. and Hocoma (DIH Medical). Broad incumbents are Universal Robots and SCHUNK. Robotiq is listed as an emerging player.
Does Barrett Technology have an API?
No public API is recorded for Barrett Technology.
What industry is Barrett Technology in?
Barrett Technology's product category is Medical Robotics. Its primary akta.pro industry code is HDAAAIAC, Healthcare & Assistive Robotics, with a secondary code of HDAAAIAL, Robot Hardware, Actuators & Components (sensors, grippers, motors). Its NAICS code is 334510 and its SIC code is 3845.