SIERRA Support Matrix
SIERRA supports multiple Platforms which researchers can write code to target, as shown below. If your desired platform is not listed, see the Configuration and Extension Tutorials for how to add it via a plugin.
Important
In SIERRA terminology, platform != OS. If a SIERRA platform runs on a given OS, then SIERRA supports doing so; if it does not, then SIERRA does not. For example, SIERRA does not support running ARGoS on windows, because ARGoS does not support windows.
Platform |
Description |
|---|---|
Simulator for fast simulation of large swarms. Requires ARGoS >= 3.0.0-beta59. |
|
Using ROS1 with the Gazebo simulator. Requires Gazebo >= 11.9.0, ROS1 Noetic or later. |
|
Using ROS1 with a real robot platform of your choice. ROS1 Noetic or later is required. |
SIERRA supports multiple HPC environments for execution of experiments in on HPC hardware (see HPC Execution Environment Plugins) and on real robots (see Real Robot Execution Environment Plugins). If your desired execution environment is not listed, see the Configuration and Extension Tutorials for how to add it via a plugin.
Execution Environment |
Description |
|---|---|
An HPC cluster managed by the SLURM scheduler |
|
An HPC cluster managed by the Torque/MOAB scheduler |
|
Adhoc |
Miscellaneous collection of networked HPC compute nodes or random servers; not managed by a scheduler |
HPC local |
The SIERRA host machine,e.g., a researcher’s laptop |
Real turtlebot3 robots |
Platform |
Description |
|---|---|
Simulator for fast simulation of large swarms. Requires ARGoS >= 3.0.0-beta59. |
|
Using ROS1 with the Gazebo simulator. Requires Gazebo >= 11.9.0, ROS1 Kinetic or later. |
|
Using ROS1 with a real robot platform of your choice. ROS1 Kinetic or later is required. |
SIERRA also supports multiple output formats for experimental outputs. If the format for your experimental outputs is not listed, see the Configuration and Extension Tutorials for how to add it via a plugin. SIERRA currently only supports XML experimental inputs.
Experimental Output Format |
Scope |
|---|---|
CSV file |
Raw experimental outputs, transforming into heatmap images |
PNG file |
Stitching images together into videos |
SIERRA supports (mostly) mix-and-match between platforms, execution environments, experiment input/output formats as shown in its support matrix below. This is one of the most powerful features of SIERRA!
Execution Environment |
Platform |
Experimental Input Format |
Experimental Output Format |
|---|---|---|---|
SLURM |
ARGoS, ROS1+Gazebo |
XML |
CSV, PNG |
Torque/MOAB |
ARGoS, ROS1+Gazebo |
XML |
CSV, PNG |
ADHOC |
ARGoS, ROS1+Gazebo |
XML |
CSV, PNG |
Local |
ARGoS, ROS1+Gazebo |
XML |
CSV, PNG |
ROS1+Turtlebot3 |
ROS1+Gazebo, ROS1+robot |
XML |
CSV, PNG |