April 11, 2022
INTRICON ENGINEERS MENTOR ROBOTICS COMPETITION TEAM
Intricon medical products engineer Austin Barrett has been a mentor to the Holy Family Catholic High School Robotics Team for the past five years. Austin dedicates approximately 200 hours each year to the team during the robotics build and competition season, from January through April. Austin works with students, teaching robotics building and development, along with teamwork and communication skills. This year, Intricon senior process development engineer Julia Rusciano joined Austin as another mentor from Intricon for the team.
On April 8 and 9, 2022, the robotics team competed in the Minnesota 10,000 Lakes Regional Competition, presented by Medtronic. The team, called Pyrobotics, placed 15th out of 55 teams in the qualification rounds and went on to be the 7th seed in the quarter finals. While the team lost in the finals, its robot reached the highest level of traverse climbing in the competition.
Intricon supports Austin, Julia, and the members of the Holy Family robotics team as a team sponsor.
FIRST® Robotics Competition teams design, program, and build a robot, starting with a standard kit of parts and common set of rules, to play in themed, head-to-head challenges. Teams also build a brand, develop community partnerships for support, and work to promote STEM in their local community as part of their role in the program.
Under strict rules and limited time and resources, students are challenged to build industrial-size robots to play a difficult field game in alliance with other teams. Students at all skill levels participate — technical or non-technical. The robotics competition gives high school students and their adult mentors the opportunity to work and create together to solve a common problem.
