Sim Runner
A runner pool that executes tests against a robotics simulator (Gazebo Harmonic or Webots). Hosted sim runners use NVIDIA T4 GPU EC2 spot instances; self-hosted sim runners use customer-provided GPU hosts via the roboticks-runner Go binary.
Why It Matters
Sim-in-the-loop tests catch regressions that hardware tests would miss because hardware is slow and not always available. The cost is GPU compute; metering per sim-minute keeps the bill aligned with usage and prevents always-on GPU spend.
How Roboticks Implements It
Hosted runners use G4dn.xlarge spot instances with a warmed AMI (Gazebo Harmonic + Webots + ROS2 distros preinstalled). Auto-scales on queue depth, auto-shutdown after 5 min idle. Self-hosted runners declare execution_flavors=[gazebo, webots] and a gpu capability; the job router prefers them for free compute.