This SAE Aerospace Recommended Practice (ARP) describes terminology specific to unmanned systems (UMSs) and definitions for those terms. It focuses only on terms used exclusively for the development, testing, and other activities regarding UMSs. It further focuses on the autonomy and performance measures aspects of UMSs and is based on the participants' earlier work, the Autonomy Levels for Unmanned Systems (ALFUS) Framework, published as NIST Special Publication 1011-I-2.0 and NIST Special Publication 1011-II-1.0. This Practice also reflects the collaboration results with AIR5665. Terms that are used in the community but can be understood with common dictionary definitions are not included in this document. Further efforts to expand the scope of the terminology are being planned.

The purpose of this Aerospace Recommended Practice is to communicate to the unmanned systems community a common set of terminology and definitions that can be used as guidance for designing, developing, testing, or otherwise describing an unmanned system or any of its subsystems.