  Modern intelligent systems researchers form hypotheses about system behavior
and then run experiments using one or more independent variables to test their
hypotheses. We present SIERRA, a novel framework structured around that idea
for accelerating research development and improving reproducibility of results.
SIERRA accelerates research by automating the process of generating executable
experiments from queries over independent variables(s), executing experiments,
and processing the results to generate deliverables such as graphs and videos.
It shifts the paradigm for testing hypotheses from procedural ("Do these steps
to answer the query") to declarative ("Here is the query to test--GO!"),
reducing the burden on researchers. It employs a modular architecture enabling
easy customization and extension for the needs of individual researchers,
thereby eliminating manual configuration and processing via throw-away scripts.
SIERRA improves reproducibility of research by providing automation independent
of the execution environment (HPC hardware, real robots, etc.) and targeted
platform (arbitrary simulator or real robots). This enables exact experiment
replication, up to the limit of the execution environment and platform, as well
as making it easy for researchers to test hypotheses in different computational
environments.
