Stottler Henke Wins Eight Contracts to Develop AI Systems for Autonomous Air, Maritime, and Space Operations
New Technologies Will Automate and Improve Planning, Scheduling, Situation Awareness, and Mission Execution for the Department of Defense and NASA
SAN MATEO, CA, March 25, 2025 – Stottler Henke announced eight new projects for the U.S. Department of Defense and NASA to provide advanced artificial intelligence software to automate and improve planning, scheduling, mission execution, and situation awareness.
Funded by the Air Force, Stottler Henke is collaborating with the U.S. Space Force’s Space Domain Awareness (SDA) TAP Lab to develop automated tools to help identify objects more quickly which might threaten U.S. space assets. The SDA TAP Lab designated Stottler Henke as one of the teams awarded subscription funding from the most recent cohort, and stated, “This team successfully demonstrated the ability to infer similarity between known and unknown satellites. This is a real innovation that has both operational domain awareness (SDA) and operational intelligence applications.”
For the U.S. Space Force, Stottler Henke will apply its Aurora AI scheduling system to develop RASOR, which will automatically schedule the numerous day-to-day, routine, and emergency operations required to support satellite communications systems.
For the U.S. Space Force, Stottler Henke is also developing LASSO, an autonomy architecture which will support automated operations of the Space Force’s critical, high-value satellites over long durations without operator intervention. LASSO will help operators understand its decisions and the limits of its abilities, so they can calibrate their trust appropriately.
For NASA, Stottler Henke is developing Disaster Autonomous Aerial Response Technology (DAART), which will enable highly autonomous, resilient, adaptable, and scalable unmanned air vehicle (UAV) operations with human-machine collaboration to support complex and dynamic disaster response missions.
Also for NASA, Stottler Henke is continuing to develop MAIFLOWER, which uses AI model-based reasoning, case-based reasoning, and machine learning to detect, diagnose, and triage faults in space-based systems. MAIFLOWER also plans, schedules, and executes courses of action to mitigate the fault’s effects.
The MREAM system, under development for NASA, will enable lunar rovers to provide frequently updated high-resolution maps of the Lunar South Pole surface. MREAM will provide a custom 3D collaborative simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithm, designed to handle SLAM challenges posed by the low solar angle and long shadows at the Lunar South Pole. MREAM will also identify interesting areas to map while minimizing changes to the rover’s path and impact on its primary science mission.
For the U.S. Navy, Stottler Henke is further developing AVIAN, designed to identify, assess, and prioritize potential landing sites and generate potentially complex flight paths to help vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft land autonomously in non-cooperative environments.
Also for the Navy, Stottler Henke is continuing development of BAMBA, a scheduling system, based on its Aurora AI scheduling system and its Bottleneck Avoidance Algorithm, to optimize the use of heterogeneous, next generation multi-beam antennas on U.S. Navy ships in order to increase communications throughput and reduce latency.
“At Stottler Henke, we are committed to using our decades of expertise in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cognitive modeling to automate complex operations for the Department of Defense and NASA,” says Richard Stottler, president, Stottler Henke Associates. “These new projects apply our ability to combine AI technologies with advanced algorithms, user interfaces, and data management to enhance efficiency, improve decision-making, and automate operations across air, maritime, and space domains,” continues Stottler.
Stottler Henke Associates, Inc. applies cognitive modeling, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other advanced technologies to solve problems that defy solution using traditional approaches. Stottler Henke develops intelligent software solutions that provide advanced capabilities for planning and scheduling, autonomy, knowledge management and retrieval, education and training, and machine learning and data analytics. Stottler Henke has received numerous awards for its innovative AI solutions. In 2012, at a White House ceremony, Stottler Henke was one of 18 businesses and six individuals who received the prestigious Tibbetts award for the critical role they played in research and development for the government and for their success driving innovation and creating new jobs. Email: info@stottlerhenke.com.