Glossary

Acronyms and Terms Used in This Research Corpus

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Aviation / Airport

Term	Definition
A-CDM	Airport Collaborative Decision Making — shared turnaround milestones
A-SMGCS	Advanced Surface Movement Guidance and Control Systems — surface radar + routing
ADS-B	Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast — aircraft transponder positions
AIXM	Aeronautical Information Exchange Model — airport geometry standard
AMDB/AMXM	Airport Mapping Database / Exchange Model — detailed surface features
AODB	Airport Operational Database — flight schedules, gate assignments
APU	Auxiliary Power Unit — aircraft onboard generator
ARP	Aerodrome Reference Point — airport coordinate origin
ATC	Air Traffic Control
CAAS	Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore
CBRS	Citizens Broadband Radio Service — 3.5 GHz shared spectrum (US)
CDM	Collaborative Decision Making
CFD	Computational Fluid Dynamics — for jet blast modeling
CTOT	Calculated Take-Off Time
DPI	Departure Planning Information — A-CDM message type
EASA	European Union Aviation Safety Agency
EIBT	Estimated In-Block Time
FAA	Federal Aviation Administration (US)
FOD	Foreign Object Debris — objects on runway/taxiway/apron
GSE	Ground Support Equipment — vehicles servicing aircraft
ICAO	International Civil Aviation Organization
IGOM	IATA Ground Operations Manual
MLAT	Multilateration — triangulating position from multiple receivers
NOTAM	Notice to Air Missions — temporary airspace/surface restrictions
ODD	Operational Design Domain — defined conditions for autonomous operation
TOBT	Target Off-Block Time — planned pushback time
TSAT	Target Start-up Approval Time — engine start clearance
ULD	Unit Load Device — standardized cargo/baggage container
URLLC	Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication — 5G service class

Autonomous Vehicles

Term	Definition
ADAS	Advanced Driver Assistance Systems — L1-L2 automation
AGVS	Automated Guided Vehicle System — FAA's term for autonomous GSE
AV	Autonomous Vehicle
BEV	Bird's-Eye-View — top-down representation for driving
CAN	Controller Area Network — vehicle communication bus
DBW	Drive-by-Wire — electronic vehicle control
E2E	End-to-End — single model from sensors to controls
FSD	Full Self-Driving (Tesla)
HD Map	High-Definition Map — centimeter-accurate road map
L4	SAE Level 4 — high driving automation (no human fallback in ODD)
LiDAR	Light Detection and Ranging — laser-based 3D scanning
MPC	Model Predictive Control — optimization-based control
OTA	Over-the-Air — remote software/model updates
PID	Proportional-Integral-Derivative — basic control algorithm
RSS	Responsibility-Sensitive Safety — Mobileye's formal safety model
RTK	Real-Time Kinematic — cm-level GPS correction
SLAM	Simultaneous Localization and Mapping
SOTIF	Safety of the Intended Functionality — ISO 21448
TRL	Technology Readiness Level — 1 (concept) to 9 (proven)
V2X	Vehicle-to-Everything — communication standard
VRU	Vulnerable Road User — pedestrians, cyclists

AI / ML

Term	Definition
3DGS	3D Gaussian Splatting — neural scene representation
CFG	Classifier-Free Guidance — controlling generation quality
CoC	Chain-of-Causation — Alpamayo's reasoning format
DDIM	Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models — fast diffusion sampling
DDPM	Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models
DiT	Diffusion Transformer — transformer-based diffusion model
DLA	Deep Learning Accelerator — NVIDIA dedicated inference hardware
DRL/MARL	Deep/Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
EMA	Exponential Moving Average — codebook update method
FID	Fréchet Inception Distance — image quality metric
FSQ	Finite Scalar Quantization — codebook-free tokenization (used by Cosmos)
FVD	Fréchet Video Distance — video quality metric
GTSAM	Georgia Tech Smoothing and Mapping — factor graph library
IoU	Intersection over Union — overlap metric
ISAM2	Incremental Smoothing and Mapping — fast factor graph optimization
JEPA	Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture — LeCun's world model paradigm
KV-cache	Key-Value cache — transformer inference optimization
LoRA	Low-Rank Adaptation — efficient fine-tuning method
mAP	Mean Average Precision — detection accuracy metric
MBRL	Model-Based Reinforcement Learning
MoE	Mixture of Experts — conditional computation
NDS	nuScenes Detection Score — composite metric
NeRF	Neural Radiance Fields — neural scene representation
ONNX	Open Neural Network Exchange — model interchange format
OOD	Out-of-Distribution — input outside training distribution
PAC	Probably Approximately Correct — learning theory bound
POMDP	Partially Observable Markov Decision Process
PTQ/QAT	Post-Training Quantization / Quantization-Aware Training
RoPE	Rotary Position Embedding
RSSM	Recurrent State-Space Model — Dreamer's dynamics model
SSM	State Space Model — O(n) sequence model (Mamba)
TOPS	Tera Operations Per Second — compute performance
TRT	TensorRT — NVIDIA inference optimization
VGICP	Voxelized Generalized Iterative Closest Point — scan matching
VLA	Vision-Language-Action model — unified perception+reasoning+control
VLM	Vision-Language Model — multimodal AI model
VQ-VAE	Vector Quantized Variational Autoencoder — discrete tokenization

Optimization and Numerical Linear Algebra

Term	Definition
Objective	Function minimized by a solver; in autonomy it combines residuals, priors, weights, and constraints. See Objective and Residual Design Audit.
Residual	Difference between a predicted measurement and an observed measurement, expressed in the correct frame and units. See Nonlinear Least Squares.
Whitened residual	Residual premultiplied by square-root information so its components are in normalized noise units. See Objective and Residual Design Audit.
Jacobian	Derivative of a residual with respect to a local state perturbation. See Jacobians, Autodiff, and Manifold Linearization.
Manifold update	Tangent-space update retracted back to a constrained state such as SO(3), SE(3), or a unit quaternion. See Jacobians, Autodiff, and Manifold Linearization.
Rank deficiency	Condition where a Jacobian or Hessian has unobservable or redundant directions. See Eigenvalues, Hessian Conditioning, and Observability.
Schur complement	Block elimination algebra used to solve reduced systems or form marginalization priors, with different interpretation in each use. See Sparse Estimation Backend Crosswalk.
Marginalization prior	Prior produced by eliminating old variables from a fixed-lag or reduced estimator while preserving their linearized information on remaining variables. See Schur Complement, Marginalization, and PCG.
Covariance recovery	Process of extracting selected uncertainty blocks from a solved information or square-root system. See Square-Root Information and Covariance Recovery.
PCG	Preconditioned conjugate gradients, an iterative method for large symmetric positive definite systems. See Sparse Estimation Backend Crosswalk.
Linearization	Local first-order approximation of residuals around the current estimate. See Nonlinear Least Squares.
Local coordinates	Tangent-space coordinates used to perturb manifold states during linearization. See Jacobians, Autodiff, and Manifold Linearization.
Normal equations	Linear system J^T J delta = -J^T r formed from a least-squares linearization; fast but can square conditioning. See Cholesky, LDLT, and Normal Equations.
Damping	Numerical regularization that changes a nonlinear step to improve local stability; it is not a physical prior. See Solver Selection and Convergence Diagnosis.
Trust-region ratio	Actual reduction divided by predicted reduction, used to accept or reject trial steps and update the trust region. See Trust Region and Line Search Globalization.
Line-search step length	Scalar step multiplier selected to reduce the objective along a chosen direction. See Trust Region and Line Search Globalization.
Convergence criterion	Stopping rule based on cost change, gradient norm, step norm, solver status, or iteration budget. See Solver Selection and Convergence Diagnosis.
Nullspace	State direction that does not change the linearized residual. See Eigenvalues, Hessian Conditioning, and Observability.
Gauge freedom	Model symmetry such as global pose or scale that measurements cannot determine without a chosen gauge or prior. See Sparse Estimation Backend Crosswalk.
Condition number	Ratio describing how sensitive a linear solve is to perturbations. See Sparse Estimation Backend Crosswalk.
Sparsity	Matrix structure where most entries are zero because factors touch only a few variables. See Sparse Matrices, Fill-In, and Ordering.
Fill-in	New nonzero entries created during sparse elimination. See Sparse Matrices, Fill-In, and Ordering.
Ordering	Variable elimination order that changes fill-in, runtime, memory, and sometimes diagnostic visibility. See Sparse Estimation Backend Crosswalk.
Cholesky	Factorization for symmetric positive definite systems, often used on normal equations. See Cholesky, LDLT, and Normal Equations.
LDLT	Symmetric factorization that can expose indefinite or semidefinite behavior more directly than plain Cholesky. See Cholesky, LDLT, and Normal Equations.
QR	Least-squares factorization that works directly on J and avoids explicitly forming J^T J. See QR, SVD, and Rank-Revealing Solvers.
SVD	Singular value decomposition used to expose rank, weak modes, and nullspace directions. See QR, SVD, and Rank-Revealing Solvers.
Square-root information	Factor whose transpose times itself is the information matrix, commonly used for stable residual whitening and priors. See Square-Root Information and Covariance Recovery.
Marginal covariance	Uncertainty block for selected variables after accounting for eliminated or unqueried variables. See Square-Root Information and Covariance Recovery.
Preconditioner	Approximate inverse or scaling that improves PCG convergence. See Schur Complement, Marginalization, and PCG.

Safety / Certification

Term	Definition
AMLAS	Assurance of Machine Learning for Autonomous Systems — safety methodology
ASIL	Automotive Safety Integrity Level — ISO 26262 (A-D)
CE	Conformité Européenne — EU product certification mark
GSN	Goal Structuring Notation — safety case diagram notation
PL	Performance Level — ISO 13849 safety rating (a-e)
SIL	Safety Integrity Level — IEC 61508
Simplex	Dual-controller architecture — high-performance + verified fallback
UL 4600	Standard for evaluation of autonomous products

Companies

Abbreviation	Full Name
IAG	International Airlines Group (British Airways parent)
SATS	Singapore Airport Terminal Services
TLD	Tracteurs et Lourds de Distribution (GSE manufacturer)

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160+ terms defined. Updated as corpus grows.