ROBOTS TO INVADE DETROIT FOR GLOBAL COMPETITION

Inside the Michigan Engineering Zone, it was time to give “Tink,” a robot built by students at Detroit’s Pershing High School, some rivets.

Safety glasses on and her red hair tied back, 15-year-old student Delann Pillivant grabbed the robot’s aluminum frame and pushed a power drill into its center bar, making the modification for an upcoming global robotics competition coming this month to Detroit.

Pillivant spent most of her first year at the facility, known as the “MEZ,” watching older students on the Pershing robotics team take the lead in building a robot from scratch, modifying it for FIRST Robotics competitions.

This year, Pillivant is in the driver’s seat — literally — for“I was in robotics last year. We had one guy, a senior, who did everything and I was just observing. And now I am the driver. That means I drive the robot, give it love and do doughnuts,” Pillivant said at the facilty last week. “We don’t have specific jobs. We all do everything. I connected this motor controller here.”