Joseph Putney

Mr. Joseph Putney is the VP of Engineering at RRAI. He is a highly respected roboticist within the industry, known for his combination of business savvy and technical know-how. Mr. Putney’s role has expanded in recent years to overseeing the company’s core engineering efforts across all of its commercial business units, which includes transit buses, class 8 trucks, yard trucks, shuttles, and agriculture vehicles. Mr. Putney helped build RRAI (the commercial expansion of Robotic Research) from the ground up. From 2002 to 2014, Robotic Research was exclusively a defense contractor, involved in all the major autonomous ground vehicles programs for the US Army. In 2014, initially with a team of two engineers, Mr. Putney led RRAI’s journey to being a major player in the commercial sector. By 2015, Mr. Putney deployed one of the early robo-shuttles, providing transit services for the wounded soldiers, cadre, and medical staff between the Warrior Transition Battalion Barracks and the Womack Army Medical Center hospital campuses. He then built new departments and processes to further develop and support the deployment of robo-shuttles on four continents, operating in a variety of environments, including downtown and residential areas, academic/corporate campuses, underground parking facilities, boardwalks, and tourist sites. To further expand RRAI’s transit footprint, Mr. Putney oversaw the development of the first autonomous, heavy-duty transit bus in North America, the New Flyer XcelsiorAV and its partnership with the two largest bus OEMS in North America, New Flyer and Gillig. After RRAI’s successes in the transit industry, Mr. Putney drove the expansion into the yard truck industry.