UAV Glossary

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AAIB    Air Accident Investigation Branch

Airprox             Aircraft having unplanned close proximity in the air

AN       Anchor Nodes

AOA    Angle of Arrival

AP        Access Point

Aplanatic lens A lens that has been corrected for spherical and chromatic aberrations (also relevant is Apochromatic lenses, corrected for Red Green Blue).

BMFA   British Model Flyers Association

BVLOS Beyond Visual Line of Sight

CAA    Civil Aviation Authority (UK)

CAD  Computer aided design. A general term for computer programs such as DS Solidworks, AutoCad, 3DSMax, blender, etc.

CAP     Civil Aviation Publication

CSAIL  Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

Diffraction        The effect a surface has on a light source

DF        Drone Factor Ltd

DJI       Dà-Jiāng Innovations

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DSM     Digital surface model

EASA   European Aviation Safety Agency

EKF      Extended Kalman Filtering

FAA     Federal Aviation Administration

GLONASS        Global Orbiting Navigation Satellite System

GNSS   Global Navigation Satellite System (Galileo)

GPS      Global Positioning System

IPP       Integration Pilot Program

IPS       Indoor Positioning System

IR         Infra-Red (light)

KF        Kalman Filter

Lipo      Lithium Ion Polymer Battery

LOS      Line of Sight

MERSAR          Merseyside Search and Rescue

NARI   Next Era of Aviation

NASA  National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NLOS   Non-Line of Sight

NN      Nearest Neighbour

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OM      Optical Metrology. Measurements made through optical sensors.

OSC     Operational Safety Case

PfCO   Permission to Fly Commercial Operations

PIC      Pilot (or Person) In Command

Refraction        Bending of light by a medium (eg water, glass)

RGBD  Red/Green/Blue + Depth

RGB     Red/Green/Blue (light detection)

RTH Return to Home

RSS      Received Signal Strength (also known as RSS, depending on system)

RSSI     Received Signal Strength Indication/Indicator

Rx        Receiver (radio link)

SfM      Structure from Motion is a photogrammetric range imaging technique for estimating three-dimensional structures from two-dimensional image sequences that may be coupled with local motion signals (Shapiro 2001)

SLAM   Simultaneous localization and mapping (of objects/points in an image).

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Specular Gloss              Relative reflectivity of a surface or object.

SUA     Small Unmanned Aircraft

TDOA  Time Difference of Arrival

TN       Target Node

TOA    Time of Arrival

Tomography/tomographic scans            In this context, tomographic scans are essentially instances of a scan repeated over time, so one can see any movement or changes in the scene.

UAS     Unmanned Aerial System

UAV     Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

UK       United Kingdom

USD     United States Dollars

UTM    Unified Traffic Management

UWB   Ultra-wide Band

VLOS   Visual Line of Sight

WRCFS            Wirral Remote Control Flyers Society

XY       measurements made in 2 dimensions only: X axis (horizontal), Y axis (vertical)

XYZ     measurements made in 3 dimensions: X axis (horizontal), Y axis (vertical) and Z axis (depth)

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