FIRST Indiana Robotics Atlas

FIRST Indiana Robotics faced challenges in efficiently answering critical location-based questions essential for event planning and team management. To address these issues, Sledgehammer Infosystems developed the FIRST Indiana Robotics Atlas, a centralized platform designed to streamline data management and enhance decision-making processes.

Technology Stack

Challenges

The planning committees of FIRST Indiana Robotics frequently grappled with questions such as:

• "Where are our teams located?"
• "Where should we host events?"
• "Where should we focus our team recruiting efforts?"
• "Which teams operate within a 50-mile radius of a potential sponsor?"

Traditionally, these questions were addressed through manual methods, including:

• Guesswork and estimations
• Spreadsheets populated by manually inputting addresses into mapping services
• Data stored in disparate formats, leading to inefficiencies and inaccuracies

This approach resulted in duplicated efforts, wasted time, and a lack of reusable data, highlighting the need for a more efficient solution.

Solution

The Atlas stores comprehensive data about teams, schools, and event sites, acquired through:

• Importing spreadsheets
• Pulling data from the FIRST website & APIs
• Manual entry

Key features include:

• Pre-built reporting tools to transform raw data into actionable insights
• An interface for advanced users to build custom MongoDB aggregation pipelines directly in the browser

Impact

The Atlas has significantly improved the efficiency of event planning and team management by:

• Reducing manual data entry and associated errors
• Providing quick access to accurate, centralized data
• Enabling data-driven decision-making through advanced reporting tools

With the continuous addition of data to the Atlas, we are now equipped to efficiently answer a wide range of location-related questions, enhancing our strategic planning and operational effectiveness.