Aerospace contractor improves navigation by 41% with robotics expert training

The contractor set out to improve autonomous navigation in GPS-denied and contested environments. Success depended on building resilience against environmental, communication, and adversarial challenges while meeting strict DoD performance and safety requirements.

• Strengthen perception algorithms for adverse conditions
• Improve path planning and multi-agent coordination
• Reduce reliance on excessive simulation hours
• Provide explainability to meet certification standards

Legacy approaches left significant gaps in contested settings, slowing certification and risking penalties.

• Perception algorithms failed in 43% of adverse weather cases
• Path planning showed 51% suboptimal routes in complex terrain
• Reinforcement learning required 10,000+ hours of simulation per behavior
• Multi-robot coordination degraded 67% with latency >100ms
• Lack of explainability blocked 73% of behaviors from certification
• Competitor systems achieved 2.5x better performance in DARPA challenges

CleverX mobilized a specialized team of robotics engineers with experience in defense autonomy and MIL-STD compliance. Together, they built a layered autonomy stack combining advanced perception, planning, and resilience techniques.

Expert recruitment:

• 22 robotics engineers: 9 perception specialists, 7 control systems experts, 6 ML researchers
• Avg 8 years in defense robotics, most with security clearance
• Skills across SLAM, swarm robotics, and MIL-STD safety certification

Technical framework:

• Sensor fusion algorithms combining LiDAR, radar, vision
• Hierarchical planning for multi-objective optimization
• Sim-to-real transfer learning cutting simulation by 75%
• Formal verification ensuring safety-critical compliance

Quality protocols:

• 500 edge case and failure mode test scenarios
• Hardware-in-the-loop validation with real sensor data
• Adversarial stress testing including jamming and spoofing
• Documentation aligned with DO-178C and MIL-STD-882E

A phased program addressed failure modes, developed new algorithms, and delivered certification-ready performance.

Weeks 1-2: Gap analysis

• Reviewed 30 behaviors for failure points
• Benchmarked sensor suite in 20 environments
• Quantified $6.2M potential penalties from gaps

Weeks 3-6: Algorithm development

• Perception stack hit 95% object detection in rain/fog
• Planning reduced path lengths by 32%
• Coordination protocols sustained performance with 500ms latency

Weeks 7-9: Field validation

• Tested across 15 real-world environments
• Validated against DoD requirements
• Demonstrated resilience to stakeholders

Weeks 10-11: Certification prep

• Produced 2,000 pages of certification evidence
• Completed formal MIL-STD safety analysis
• Created operator training for 100 personnel

Efficiency gains:

Development moved faster with fewer simulation cycles and smoother reuse across platforms, cutting time without compromising rigor.

• Development cycle for new behaviors cut 8 → 4 months
• Simulation time reduced 68%
• Field testing accelerated 45%
• Code reuse improved 52% across platforms

Quality improvements:

Core autonomy metrics-navigation, reliability, perception fidelity, and team coordination—improved significantly in contested conditions.

• Navigation success rate up 41%
• Mean time between failures improved 12 → 28 hours
• False positive detections reduced 56%
• Multi-agent task completion up 37%

Business impact:

Performance translated directly into wins, avoided penalties, and lower engineering cost per capability.

• Secured $12M DARPA contract with validated capabilities
• Avoided $3.8M in penalties for late delivery
• Won $8.5M in follow-on defense contracts
• Cut $2.7M in development costs via efficiency gains

Strategic advantages:

The program left a modular, certifiable autonomy stack and simulation backbone the team can reuse across platforms and missions.

• Built modular autonomy stack deployable across 8 platforms
• Established leadership in GPS-denied operations
• Simulation infra enabled 100× faster development cycles
• Algorithms contributed to 2 new industry standards

The contractor's autonomous systems received certification from a defense testing authority.