The story
Named after Hungarian-American electrical engineer Rudolf E. Kálmán (1930–2016), one of the primary developers of its theory.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Kalman filter
Today it means: An algorithm that uses a series of measurements observed over time, containing statistical noise and other inaccuracies, and produces estimates of unknown variables that tend to be more precise than those based on a single measurement alone. They are used in navigation, signal processing, etc. Full definition →