Heriberto Reynoso is a high school graduate of the early 2000s and was the type of kid “building robots in my garage” when such technological skills were a bit rare among American youth. 

His parents wondered what he was doing, while at school, he recalls teachers that “didn’t understand what I was asking.” Reynoso was perhaps a bit ahead of his time at his high school in Brownsville. His technological bent grew even stronger during his college years, which included software engineering internships at NASA.

Reynoso also found an entrepreneurial element amongst his varied interests when in November 2011, he founded Reybotics. The Mercedes-based robotics manufacturing company offers an educational component that delivers technology curriculum to schools. Reynoso’s company improvised out of necessity in 2020 and 2021, pivoting to the manufacturing of face shields that were in high demand at the time in hospitals. 

Those years were challenging economic times. Reybotics was not allowed access to schools for classroom sessions due to widespread closures and the emphasis on remote learning. Reynoso downscaled his company’s operations and moved Reybotics to smaller quarters in Weslaco. He would expand educational offerings to schools in the Valley in connecting to STEM-related programs emphasizing science, math and engineering programs.

The commercial component has continued as well. Designing and producing prosthetic devices is one piece of what Reybotics does. Reynoso’s greatest passion, however, is evident when he speaks of reaching out to students and schools in being a mentor. He can now answer the sort of questions his high school teachers were unable to grasp years ago. 

“It’s super exciting to be part of STEM curriculum in Valley schools,” he said. “It’s building up the human capital we have and helping to create more engineers and scientists. For us, the commercial funds our educational products and services.”

Reaching Students Earlier

Back in his hometown, Reynoso recounted on the Reybotics Facebook page what it was like to connect with hundreds of schoolchildren at an hours-long session at the Children’s Museum of Brownsville.

“From virtual reality headsets that transported us to new worlds, to navigating Mars rovers to collect habitats, we soared … and rolled into the future with spherical robots,” he wrote of the early 2024 session at the museum. 

It’s all part of Reybotics’ educational offerings. Reynoso, in collaboration with area schools, has created a wide-ranging curriculum. It includes programs that introduce learners ages 5 and younger to simple engineering vocabulary and the basics of programming. For “older learners,” ages 6 to 12, they are now ready to delve deeper into robotics and master procedural programming.

One can see just how early students can start learning in photos of Reybotics at Alpha Brownsville. It’s a STEM-oriented school for grade-school youth that draws children from SpaceX families who have relocated to work at Starbase. In the photos, kindergarten-aged children use tablets they have programmed to move small robots from point to point on their classroom floor.

Reynoso uses terms like “augmented reality” and being “collaborative and interactive in the digital space” to describe how children are learning today and doing so at a much earlier age than previous eras. It’s not just learning “how to design a robot from scratch,” he said. They are also learning how to program it and know something about the software that operates it. 

The goal is to make such high-tech curriculum more affordable to public schools and not just the private schools. Reynoso intends to reach that goal by developing apps that will be readily accessible to more students. They could ultimately reach kids like the one who grew up in Brownsville making robots in his garage.

“We want to standardize this and take it to states across the nation,” he said of the systems and learning tools Reybotics is developing.

Work & Teaching Space

Reynoso envisions bringing his operations back to Mercedes and the city’s industrial park.

It would be a facility large enough to house the equipment and machinery needed to mass produce commercial products geared in large part to the healthcare industry. Just as importantly for Reynoso, there would be space allocated for field trips from area schools where he could hold workshops and lead tours explaining and teaching the world of robotics.

“It means a lot to me to be able to do all of this here,” he said. “I love the Valley. I’ve never wanted to be anywhere else.”