robotics_glossary

Robotics glossary of acronyms. Check also the awesome-robotics list.

General

• AGV - Automated Guided Vehicle
• DOF - Degrees Of Freedom
• FSM - Finite State Machine
• NN - Nearest-Neighbor
• MRS - Multi-Robot System
• MVS - Multi-view stereo
• INS - Inertial Navigation System
• GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite System
• GPS - Global Positioning System
• HMM - Hidden Markov Models
• HRI - Human-robot Interaction
• MLE - Maximum likelihood estimation
• MDP - Markov decision process
• C-SAM - Collaborative Smoothing and Mapping
• USAR - Urban Search and Rescue
• UAV - Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
• NLP - Natural Language Processing
• DT - Digital Twin
• CPI - Counts Per Inch
• CPS - Cooperative Positioning System

Math

• EVD - Eigenvalue Decomposition
• PDF - Probability Density Function
• SVD - Singular Value Decomposition
• MAE - Mean Absolute Error
• MSE - Mean Square Error
• RMSE - Root Mean Square Error
• MAPE - Mean Absolute Percentage Error
• RPY - Roll Pitch Yaw

Software

• MRPT - Mobile Robot Programming Toolkit
• PCL - Point Cloud Library
• ROS - Robot Operating System
• OMPL - Open Motion Planning Library
• URDF - Unified Robot Description Format
• SRDF - Semantic Robot Description Format
• RCL - ROS Client Library
• RMW - ROS Middleware
• IDL - Interface Definition Language
• DDS - Data distribution service
• USD - Universal Scene Description
• FLANN - Fast Library for Approximate Nearest Neighbors
• YARP - Yet Another Robot Platform

Software development

• LUT - Look-up table
• RAII - Resource Acquisition Is Initialization
• SDK - Software Development Kit
• GUI - Graphical User Interface
• ABI - Application Binary Interface
• API - Application Programming Interface
• POD - Plain Old Data
• EOF - End Of File
• EOL - End Of Line
• DRY - Don't Repeat Yourself
• YAGNI - You aren't gonna need it
• KISS - Keep it Simple Stupid
• CI - Continuous Integration
• CD - Continuous Delivery
• UT - Unit Tests
• MT - Module Tests
• SCA - Static Code Analysis
• DCA - Dynamic Code Analysis

C++

• RVO - Return Value Optimization
• PIMPL - Pointer to IMPLementation
• SFINAE - Substitution Failure Is Not An Error
• RTTI - Run-time Type Information
• ODR - One Definition Rule
• SSO - Short String Optimization

Hardware

Electronics

• CDM - Charged-Device Model
• CCD - Charge Coupled Device
• CMOS - Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor
• ESD - Electrostatic Discharge
• EMI - Electromagnetic Interference
• FET - Field Effect Transistor
• LCD - Liquid Crystal Display
• LED - Light Emitting DIode
• MOSFET - Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor
• NMOS - Negative-channel Metal-Oxide Semiconductor
• PCB - Printed-Circuit Board
• RF - Radio Frequency

Processors/microcontrollers

• VLSI - Very Large-Scale Integration
• IC - Integrated Circuit
• SoC - System on a Chip
• LPGA - Laser Programmable Gate Array
• FPGA - Field Programmable Gate Array
• ASIC - Application-Specific Integrated Circuit
• CPU - Central Processing Unit
• FPU - Floating Point Unit
• ALU - Arithmetical and Logic Unit
• CISC - Complex Instruction Set Computer
• RISC - Reduced Instruction Set Computer
• ARM - Advanced RISC Machines
• ISA - Instruction Set Architectures
• SMT - Simultaneous Multithreading
• VFP - Vector Floating Point
• SIMD - Single Instruction, Multiple Data
• MMU - Memory Management Unit
• CRC - Cyclic redundancy check
• DMA - Direct Memory Access
• NVIC - Nested Vectored Interrupt Controller
• RTC - Real-time clock
• MPU - Memory Protection Unit
• RAM - Random Access Memory
• ROM - Read Only Memory
• DAC - Digital Analog Converter
• ADC - Analog/Digital Converter
• JTAG - Joint Test Action Group

Registers

• SP - Stack Pointer
• PC - Program Counter
• ISP - Interrupt Stack Pointer
• IR - Instruction Register

Interfaces

• GPIO - General Purpose Input/Output
• UART - Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter
• I2C - Inter-Integrated Circuit
• SPI - Serial Peripheral Interface Bus
• CAN - Controller Area Network
• HDMI - High-Definition Multimedia Interface
• USB - Universal Serial Bus
• VGA - Video Graphics Array

Algorithms

• NDT - Normal Distributions Transform

• GNN - Global nearest-neighbor

• k-NN - k-Nearest Neighbors

• HOG - Histogram of local Oriented Gradients

• MTT - Multitarget Tracking

• SJPDAF - Sample Based Joint Probabilistic Data Association Filter

• OFC - Object Following Controller

• FABMAP - Fast Appearance-Based Mapping

• SEIF - Sparse Extended Information Filter

• MRF - Markov Random Field

• RRT - Rapidly exploring random tree

• 3DHV - 3D Hough voting

• SSM - Spectral Scan Matching

• LSM - Least Square Method

Computer vision (2D/3D)

• CV - Computer Vision
• FOV - Field of View
• GCC - Geometry Consistency Clustering
• RANSAC - Random Sample Consensus
• ICP - Iterative Closest Point
• SFM - Structure From Motion
• OF - Optical Flow
• NARF - Normal Aligned Radial Feature
• ISS - Intrinsic Shape Signatures
• SIFT - Scale Invariant Feature Transform
• SURF - Speeded Up Robust Feature
• BRIEF - Binary Robust Independent Elementary Feature
• GPU - Graphics Processing Unit
• GPGPU - General Purpose Computing on GPU
• CUDA - Compute Unified Device Architecture
• HLSL - High-level shader language
• VO - Visual Odometry

Artificial Intelligence

• AI - Artificial Intelligence
• ML - Machine Learning
• DL - Deep Learning
• IRL - Inverse Reinforcement Learning
• SVM - Support Vector Machine
• RF - Random Forest
• SVM - Support Vector Machine
• NN - Neural Networks
• ANN - Artificial Neural Networks
• CNN - Convolutional Neural Network
• RNN - Recurrent Neural Network
• RCNN - Recurrent Convolutional Neural Networks
• ReLU - Rectified Linear Unit
• TPU - Tensor Processing Unit

State estimation

• KF - Kalman filter
• EKF - Extended Kalman Filter
• UKF - Unscented Kalman Filter
• RBPF - Rao-Blackwellized Particle Filter
• MCL - Monte-Carlo Localization
• MHT - Multiple-Hypothesis tracking
• MF - Madgwick Filter
• PF - Particle Filter
• SLAM - Simultaneous Localization And Mapping
• MRSLAM - Multi-Robot SLAM

Control algorithms

• DWA - Dynamic Window Approach
• PID - Proportional Integration Derivative
• MPC - Model Predictive Control
• SISO - Single-input single-output
• MIMO - Multiple-input multiple-output

Optimization algorithms

• BA - Bundle Adjustment

Sensors

• IMU - Inertial Measurement Unit
• LIDAR - Light Detection And Ranging
• LRF - Laser Range Finder
• RGB-D - Red Green Blue Depth
• SONAR - Sound Navigation and Ranging
• RADAR - Radio Detection and Ranging
• ToF - Time of Flight

Actuators

• BLDC - Brushless Direct-Current
• FOC - Field-oriented control (Vector control)
• VFD - Variable-Frequency Drive
• LQG - Linear Quadratic Gaussian

Manipulators

• PTP - Point-To-Point

• TCP - Tool Center Position

• GCS - Global Coordinate System

• MCS - Machine Coordinate System

• TCS - Tool Coordinate System

• WCS - Workpiece Coordinate System

Autonomous Vehicles

• SAE - Society of Automotive Engineers
• MaaS - Mobility as a Service
• ASWG - Autoware Software Working Group
• ADAS - Advanced Driver Assistance Systems
• MRM - Minimum Risk Maneuver
• RSS - Responsibility Sensitive Safety
• FuSa - Functional Safety
• ASIL - Automotive Safety Integrity Levels
• FIT - Failure in Time