Faculty Directory

Background:

Craig Schlenoff is currently on detail to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) as the Director of the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) National Coordination Office. In this role, he coordinates $10B of Federal Government IT R&D to identify, develop, and transition into use the secure, advanced IT, high-performance computing, networking, and software capabilities needed by the Nation, and to foster public-private partnerships that provide world-leading IT capabilities.

While at NIST, Dr. Schlenoff is the Group Leader of the Cognition and Collaboration Systems Group, the Program Manager of the Robotic Systems for Smart Manufacturing Program, and the Measurement Science for Automated Vehicles Program in the Intelligent Systems Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. His research interests include knowledge representation/ontologies, intention recognition, and performance evaluation techniques applied to manufacturing robotic systems. He has led multiple million-dollar projects, dealing with performance evaluation of advanced military technologies and agility performance of manufacturing robotic systems. He has published over 150 journal and conference papers, guest edited three journals, and written three book chapters. He is currently the Associate Vice President for Standardization within the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and the vice chair of the IEEE Robot Task Representation Working Group. He previously served as the program manager for the Process Engineering Program at NIST and the Director of Ontologies at VerticalNet. He received his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland and his Master’s degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, both in mechanical engineering, and his PhD from the University of Burgundy, France in computer science.

Education:

• Université de Dijon (France), 2014, Ph.D. Computer Science with High Honors
• Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst. (New York), 1995, M.S. Mechanical Engineering, Summa Cum Laude
• University of Maryland, College Park, 1993, B.S. Mechanical Engineering

Awards:

• NIST Bronze Medal for development of an international standard and supporting messaging language to enable enhanced robot agility in manufacturing applications. 2017.
• IEEE Emerging Technology Award for the IEEE Core Ontologies for Robotics and Automation Standard (December 2015)
• NIST Gold Medal Award for developing innovative techniques to secure and measure the performance of smartphones and applications. January 2014
• NIST Silver Medal Award for developing innovative techniques to measure the performance of automated speech translation systems leading to confident U.S. military fielding. September 2011
• NIST Bronze Medal Award for developing and administering a groundbreaking performance evaluation framework for characterizing complex intelligent systems, September 2008
• NIST Colleague’s Choice Award for exemplary leadership and championship of the NIST mission in the management of independent evaluation for the DARPA ASSIST and TRANSTAC programs, December 2007

Professional Affiliations:

• IEEE Senior Member, March 2009
• Chair, IEEE Ontologies for Robotics and Automation Standards Working Group (October 2011 – present)

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS: (Selected from over 125 total)

 

 

Full Journal (Guest Editor)

 

Schlenoff, C., Robotics and Computer Integrated Manufacturing: Special on Knowledge Driven Robotics and Manufacturing, Col. 33, June 2015.

 

Schlenoff, C., Robotics and Autonomous Systems: Special Issue on Ubiquitous Robotics, 61[11], 2013.

 

Schlenoff, C., Robotics and Autonomous Systems: Special Issue on Knowledge Representation for Autonomous Systems, 49[1-2], 2004.

 

 

Book Chapters:

 

Schlenoff, C., E. Prestes, R. Madhavan, P. Goncalves, H. Li, S. Balakirsky, T. Kramer and E. Miguelanez (2012). An IEEE Standard Ontology for Robotics and Automation. to be published in Bridges Between the Methodological and Practical Work of the Robotics and Cognitive Systems Communities - From Sensors to Concepts. A. Chibani, Springer-Verlag.

 

Schlenoff, C., A. Pietromartire, Z. Kootbally, S. Balakirsky, T. Kramer and S. Foufou (2012). Inferring Intention Through State Representation in Cooperative Human-Robot Environments. Engineering Creative Design in Robotics and Mechatronics. M. Habib and P. Davim.

 

Schlenoff C, Messina E, Lytle A, Weiss B, Virts A. Test Methods and Knowledge Representation for Urban Search and Rescue Robots. Climbing and Walking Robots, Towards New Applications.Vienna, Austria: Itech Education and Publishing; 2007. p. 546.

 

Schlenoff, C. and Messina, E., "World Modeling and Knowledge Representation,"  Intelligent Vehicle Systems: A 4D/RCS Approach, edited by R. Madhavan, E. Messina, and J. Albus 2006.

 

Albus J, Bostelman R, Madhavan R et al. Intelligent Control of Mobility Systems. Computational Intelligence in Automotive Applications. Springer Berlin / Heidelberg; 2008. p. 237-74.

 

Journal publications:

 

Morris K., Schlenoff C., Srinivasan V., “A Remarkable Resurgence of Artificial Intelligence and its Impact on Automation and Autonomy,” IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (TASE) Journal, Volume 14, Issue 2, 2017.

 

Proctor, Balakirsky, Kootbally, Kramer, Schlenoff, Shackleford, “The Canonical Robot Command Language (CRCL),” Industrial Robot Journal, Special Issue on Industrial Robot Agility, Volume 43, Issue 5, 2016.

 

Downs, Harrison, Schlenoff, “Test Methods for Robot Agility in Manufacturing,” Industrial Robot Journal, Special Issue on Industrial Robot Agility, Volume 43, Issue 5, 2016.

 

Schlenoff, Balakirsky, Kurwa, “Preface: Industrial Robot Agility,” Industrial Robot Journal, Special Issue on Industrial Robot Agility, Volume 43, Issue 5, 2016.

 

Z. Kootbally, C. Schlenoff, C. Lawler, T. Kramer, and S. K. Gupta, "Towards Robust Assembly with Knowledge Representation and PDDL," Elsevier Robotics and Computer Integrated Manufacturing, Volume 33, 2015.

 

S. R. Fiorini, J. Carbonera, P. Goncalves, V. Jorge, V. Rey, T. Haidegger, et al., "Extensions to the Core Ontology for Robotics and Automation," Elsevier Robotics and Computer Integrated Manufacturing, Volume 33, 2015.

 

C. Schlenoff, S. Balakirsky, and E. Prestes, "Preface: Special Issue on Knowledge Driven Robotics and Manufacturing," Elsevier Robotics and Computer Integrated Manufacturing, Volume 33, 2015.

 

C. Schlenoff, Z. Kootbally, A. Pietromartire, M. Franaszek, and S. Foufou, "Intention Recognition in Manufacturing Applications," Elsevier Robotics and Computer Integrated Manufacturing, Volume 33, 2015.

 

Z. Kootbally, C. Schlenoff, T. Weisman, S. Balakirsky, T. Kramer, and A. Pietromartire, "A Simulated Sensor-Based Approach for Kit Building Applications," in Robot Intelligence Technology and Applications 2, ed: Springer, 2014, pp. 241-257.

 

S. Balakirsky, Z. Kootbally, T. Kramer, A. Pietromartire, C. Schlenoff, S. Gupta,  Knowledge Driven Robotics for Kitting Applications, Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Volume 61, Issue 11, November 2013.

 

Schlenoff, C., A. Pietromartire, Z. Kootbally, S. Balakirsky and S. Foufou (2013). "SIRO: State-Based Intention Recognition Using Ontologies in Cooperative Human-Robot Environments." Robotics and Autonomous Systems Journal.

 

Schlenoff  C., Pietromartire, A., Kootbally, Z., Foufou, S., (2013) Performance Evaluation of Intention Recognition in Human/Robot Collaborative Environments, The ITEA Journal.

 

Schlenoff C, Weiss B, and Steves M, "A Detailed Discussion of Lessons Learned in Evaluating Emerging and Advanced Military Technologies," International Journal of Intelligent Control and Systems, vol. 16, 2011 pp. 94-109.

 

Madhavan, R., Yu. W, Biggs, G., Schlenoff, C., Huang, H.M. (2011). "IEEE RAS Standing Committee for Standards Activities: History and Status Update." Journal of the Robotics Society of Japan, Special Issue on "Activities of International Standards for Robot Technologies" 29(4).

 

Madhavan R, Yu. W, Biggs, G., Schlenoff, C., Huang, H.M., "IEEE RAS Standing Committee for Standards Activities: History and Status Update," Journal of the Robotics Society of Japan, Special Issue on "Activities of International Standards for Robot Technologies", 2011, vol. 29.

 

Sanders G, Weiss B,  Schlenoff C, Steves M, and Condon S, "Evaluation Methodology and Metrics Employed to Assess the TRANSTAC Two-Way Speech-to-Speech Translation Systems," Computer Speech and Language Journal, May 2011.

 

Weiss B and Schlenoff C, "Performance Assessments of Two-Way, Free-Form, Speech-to-Speech Translation Systems for Tactical Use," ITEA Journal, vol. 32, 2011, pp. 69-75.

 

Schlenoff C, "Applying the Systems, Component and Operationally-Relevant Evaluations (SCORE) Framework to Evaluate Advanced Military Technologies," ITEA Journal of Test and Evaluation, 2010, vol. 31.

 

Schlenoff C and Huang H, "Ontology/Terminology for the Automation, Classification and Evaluation of Ground Robots," Submitted to the Crosstalk: The Journal of Defense Software Engineering, 2010.

 

Kootbally Z, Schlenoff C, Madhavan R, and Foufou S, "Prediction in Dynamic Environments," ITEA Journal, vol. 31, 2010, pp. 410-416.

 

Albus J, Bostelman R, Madhavan R, Scott H, Barbera T, Szabo S, Hong T, Chang T, Shackleford W, Shneier M, Balakirsky S, Schlenoff C, Huang H, and Proctor F, "Intelligent Control of Mobility Systems," in Computational Intelligence in Automotive Applications. vol. 132, ed: Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, 2008, pp. 237-274.

 

Schlenoff C, Steves M, Weiss B, Shneier M, Virts A. Applying SCORE to Field-Based Performance Evaluations of Soldier Worn Sensor Technologies. Journal of Field Robotics 2007 September;24(8/9):671-98.

 

Schlenoff, C., Ajot, J., and Madhavan R.,  "Towards a Tool for Performance Evaluation of Autonomous Vehicle Navigation in Dynamic, On-Road Environments," Integrated Computer-Aided Engineering Journal, Vol. 12, 2005, pp. 1-15.

 

Madhavan R. and Schlenoff, C.,  "The Effect of Process Models on Short-term Prediction of Moving Objects for Autonomous Driving," International Journal of Control, Automation and Systems, Vol. 3, No. 4, 2005, pp. 509-523.

 

Schlenoff, C. and Uschold, M.,  "Editorial: Knowledge Representation and Ontologies for Autonomous Systems," Robotics and Autonomous Systems Journal: Special Issue on the 2004 AAAI Knowledge Representation and Ontologies for Autonomous Systems Spring Symposium, Vol. 49, No. 1-2, 2004, pp. 1-6.

 

Schlenoff, C., Balakirsky, S., Uschold, M., Provine, R., and Smith, S.,  "Using Ontologies to Aid in Navigation Planning in Autonomous Vehicles," Knowledge Engineering Review, Vol. 18, No. 3, 2004, pp. 243-255.

 

Balakirsky, S., Smith, S., Messina, E., Uschold, M., and Schlenoff, C.,  "Knowledge Representation For A Trash Collecting Robot: Results From The 2004 AAAI Spring Symposium," Robotics and Autonomous Systems Journal: Special Issue on the 2004 AAAI Knowledge Representation and Ontologies for Autonomous Systems Spring Symposium, Vol. 49, No. 1-2, 2004, pp. 7-12.

 

Barbera, T., Messina, E., Huang, H., Schlenoff, C., and Balakirsky, S.,  "Software Engineering for Intelligent Control Systems," Kunstliche Intelligenz Journal: Special Issue on Software Engineering for Knowledge-based Systems, Vol. 3, No. 4, 2004, pp. 22-27.

 

Barbera, T., Albus, J., Messina, E., Schlenoff, C., and Horst, J.,  "How Task Analysis Can Be Used to Derive and Organize the Knowledge For the Control of Autonomous Vehicles," Robotics and Autonomous Systems Journal: Special Issue on the 2004 AAAI Knowledge Representation and Ontologies for Autonomous Systems Spring Symposium, Vol. 49, No. 1-2, 2004, pp. 67-78.

 

Provine, R., Uschold, M., Smith, S., Balakirsky, S., and Schlenoff, C.,  "Ontology-based Methods for Enhancing Autonomous Vehicle Path Planning," Robotics and Autonomous Systems Journal: Special Issue on the 2004 AAAI Knowledge Representation and Ontologies for Autonomous Systems Spring Symposium, Vol. 49, No. 1-2, 2004, pp. 123-133.

 

Messina, E., Albus, J., Schlenoff, C., and Evans, J.,  "Knowledge Engineering for Real Time Intelligent Control," Knowledge Management in Intelligent Environments: Special Issue of the International Journal of Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems, Vol. 14, 2003, pp. 137-147.

 

Schlenoff, C., Denno, P., Ivester, R., Libes, D., Szykman, S., “An Analysis and Approach to Using Existing Ontological Systems for Application in Manufacturing” Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing, Vol. 14, No. 4, 2000, pp 257-270.

 

Schlenoff, C.,  "Second Process Specification Language (PSL) Roundtable," NIST Journal of Research, 1999.

 

Schlenoff, C., Gruninger, M., and Ciocoiu, M.,  "The Essence of the Process Specification Language," Special Issue on Modeling and Simulation of Manufacturing Systems for the Society for Computer Simulation International, 1999.

 

Schlenoff, C., Knutilla, A., and Ray, S., "Towards a Neutral Representation of Manufacturing Processes," Journal of Computer-Aided Process and Assembly Planning 1999.

 

Moncarz, H., Schlenoff, C., Knutilla, A., Gruninger, M., and Duffey, M.,  "Conference Report: NIST Workshop on Process Information Technology: From Research to Industry," Journal of Research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, No. 103, 1998, pp. 519.

 

Gruninger, M., Schlenoff, C., Knutilla, A., and Ray, S.,  "Using Process Requirements as the Basis for the Creation and Evaluation of Process Ontologies for Enterprise Modeling," ACM SIGOIS Bulletin Special Issue on Enterprise Modeling, Vol. 18. No. 3, 1997.

 

Magazine Articles:

 

Schlenoff, What More Agile Robots Could Mean for Consumers, Engadget, 2017.

 

Schlenoff, “A Suite of Ontologies for Robotics and Automation,” Robotics and Automation Magazine, 2017.

 

Schlenoff, C., “Let’s Talk, Robots” Scientific Computing Magazine, 2017.

 

R. Madhavan, W. Yu, C. Schlenoff, E. Prestes, and F. Amigoni, "Draft Standards Development of Two Working Groups," IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine, September 2014 2014.

 

Schlenoff C, Albus J, Madhavan R., Balakirsky S, Barbera A. Using 4D/RCS to Address AI Knowledge Integration. AI Magazine 27[2], 71-82. 2006.

 

Schlenoff, C., Albus, J., Madhavan R., Balakirsky, S., and Barbera, A., Integrating Disparate Knowledge Representations Within 4D/RCS.  AI Magazine Special Issue. 2005.

 

Schlenoff, C.. Report on the 2004 AAAI Spring Symposia: Knowledge Representation and Ontologies for Autonomous Systems. AI Magazine 25[4], 95-100, 2004.  American Association of Artificial Intelligence.

 

Conference Proceedings:

 

Kootbally, Schlenoff, Kramer, Gupta, “Overview of an Ontology-Based Approach for Kit Building Applications,” Semantic Robotics Workshop, California, 2017.

 

Balakirsky S., Schlenoff C., “Towards a Robot Task Ontology Standard,” Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference, 2017.

 

Downs A., Harrison W., Schlenoff C., “Using Standards in a Competition to Measure and Solve Industrial Robotics Agility Challenges” Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference, 2017.

 

Qiao, Schlenoff, Weiss, “Measurement Science Development on Health Assessment of Industrial Robot PHM”, ICRA 2017

 

C. Schlenoff, "An Overview of the IEEE Ontology for Robotics and Automation (ORA) Standardization Effort," presented at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems: Workshop on Standardized Knowledge Representation and Ontology for Robotics and Automation, Chicago, IL, 2014.

 

T. Kramer, Z. Kootbally, S. Balakirsky, C. Schlenoff, A. Pietromartire, and S. Gupta, "Performance evaluation of knowledge-based kitting via simulation," in Automation Science and Engineering (CASE), 2013 IEEE International Conference on, 2013, pp. 356-361.

 

B. A. Weiss, L. Fronczek, E. Morse, Z. Kootbally, and C. Schlenoff, "Performance assessments of Android-powered military applications operating on tactical handheld devices," in SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing, 2013, pp. 875504-875504-15.

 

Schlenoff, C., S. Foufou and S. Balakirsky (2012). An Approach to Ontology-Based Intention Recognition Using State Representations. Fourth International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Ontology Development. Barcelona, Spain.

 

Schlenoff, C., A. Pietromartire, S. Foufou and S. Balakirsky (2012). Ontology-Based State Representation for Robot Intention Recognition in Ubiquitous Environments. UBICOMP 2012 Workshop on "Smart Gadgets Meet Ubiquitous and Social Robots on the Web (UbiRobs)". Pittsburgh, PA.

 

Schlenoff, C., S. Foufou and S. Balakirsky (2012). Performance Evaluation of Robotic Knowledge Representation (PERK). Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems (PerMIS). College Park, MD.

 

Balakirsky, S., Z. Kootbally, C. Schlenoff, T. Kramer and S. Gupta (2012). An Industrial Robotic Knowledge Representation for Kit Building Applications. International Robots and Systems (IROS) Conference Vilamoura, Algarve Portugal.

 

Balakirsky, S., Z. Kootbally, T. Kramer, R. Madhavan, C. Schlenoff and M. Shneier (2012). Functional Requirements of a Model for Kitting Plans. Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems (PerMIS) conference. College Park, MD.

 

Schlenoff, C., E. Prestes, R. Madhavan, P. Goncalves, H. Li, S. Balakirsky and T. Kramer (2012). An IEEE Standard Ontology for Robotics and Automation. International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS). Vilamoura, Algarve (Portugal).

 

Weiss B, Schlenoff C, Sanders G et al. Performance Evaluation of Speech Translation Systems. Proceedings of the LREC 2008 Conference; Morocco 2008.

 

Sanders G, Bronsart S, Condon S, Schlenoff C. Odds of Successful Transfer of Low-Level Concepts: A Key Metric for Bidirectional Speech-to-Speech Machine Translation in DARPA's TRANSTAC Program. Proceedings of the LREC 2008 Conference; Morocco 2008.

 

Condon S, Phillips J, Doran C et al. Applying Automated Metrics to Speech Translation Dialogs. Proceedings of the LREC 2008 Conference; Morocco 2008.

 

Schlenoff C, Kootbally Z, Madhavan R. The Affect of Driver Aggressivity on Long-Term Moving Object Position Prediction. Proceedings of the  2007 SPIE Conference; 2007.

 

Foedisch M, Madhavan R, Balakirsky B, Schlenoff C. Symbolic Representations for Autonomous Vehicle Perception and Control in Urban Environments. Proceedings of the International Conference on Control, Automation, Robotics and Vision (ICARCV); 2006.

 

Madhavan R, Kootbally Z, Schlenoff C. Prediction in Dynamic Environments for Autonomous On-Road Driving. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Control, Automation, Robotics, and Vision; Singapore; 2006.

 

Schlenoff C. ASSIST: Overview of the First Advanced Technology Evaluations. Proceedings of the 2006 Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems (PerMIS) Conference; Gaithersburg, MD; 2006.

 

Schlenoff, C., Madhavan, R., and Kootbally, Z.,  "PRIDE: A Hierarchical, Integrated Prediction Framework for Autonomous On-Road Driving," Proceedings of the 2006 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2006.

 

Schlenoff, C., Madhavan R., Albus, J., Messina, E., and Barbera, T.,  "Fusing Disparate Information Within the 4D/RCS Architecture," Proceedings of the Fusion 2005 Conference, 2005.

 

Schlenoff, C., Washington, R., and Barbera, T.,  "An Intelligent Ground Vehicle Ontology to Enable Multi-Agent System Integration," Proceedings of the International Conference on Integration of Knowledge Intensive Multi-Agent Systems (KIMAS) 2005, Waltham, MA, 2005.

 

Schlenoff, C., Washington, R., Barbera, T., and Manteuffel, C.,  "A Standard Intelligent Systems Ontology," Proceedings of the SPIE Defense and Security Symposium, Unmanned Ground Vehicle Technology VII Conference, 2005.

 

Albus, J., Barbera, T., and Schlenoff, C.,  "Progress and Prospects for Collaborative Tactical Behaviors for Autonomous Ground and Air Vehicles," Proceedings of the 2005 AUVSI Conference, 2005.

 

Schlenoff, C., Madhavan, R., and Barbera, T.,  "A Hierarchical, Multi-Resolutional Moving Object Prediction Approach for Autonomous On-Road Driving," Proceedings of the 2004 ICRA Conference, 2004, pp. 1956-1961.

 

Schlenoff, C., Washington, R., and Barbera, T.,  "Experiences in Developing an Intelligent Ground Vehicle (IGV) Ontology in Protégé," Proceedings of the 7th International Protégé Conference, Bethesda, MD, 2004.

 

Albus, J., Barbera, T., and Schlenoff, C.,  "Progress and Prospects for Collaborative Tactical Behaviors for Autonomous Ground and Air Vehicles," Proceedings of the 2004 AUVSI Unmanned Systems North America Symposium and Exhibition, Anaheim, CA, 2004.

 

Albus, J., Barbera, T., and Schlenoff, C.,  "RCS: An Intelligent Agent Architecture," 2004 AAAI Conference: Workshop on Intelligent Agent Architectures: Combining the Strengths of Software Engineering and Cognitive Systems, San Jose, CA, 2004.

Schlenoff, C., Madhavan, R., and Balakirsky, S.,  "Representing Dynamic Environments for Autonomous Ground Vehicle Navigation," Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ IROS 2003 Conference, Las Vegas, NV, 2003.

 

Schlenoff, C., "Agents Applied to Autonomous Vehicles," Formal Approaches to Agent-Based Systems, edited by M. Hinchey, J. Rash, W. Truskiwski, C. Rouff, and D. Gordon-Spears Springer-Verlag, 2002.

 

Schlenoff, C. and Gruninger, M., "Towards a Formal Representation of Driving Behaviors," Formal Approaches to Agent-Based Systems, edited by M. Hinchey, J. Rash, W. Truskiwski, C. Rouff, and D. Gordon-Spears Springer-Verlag, 2002, pp. 290.

 

Evans, J., Messina, E., Albus, J., and Schlenoff, C.,  "Knowledge Engineering for Real Time Control," Proceedings of the International Workshop on Intelligent Knowledge Management Techniques (I-KOMAT 2002), Crema, Italy, 2002.

 

Lee, J. and Schlenoff, C.,  "Component-Based Standards Development Issues in the Process Specification Language Project," Proceedings of the International Symposium on Manufacturing with Applications at the WAC 2000 Conference, Maui, HI, 2000.

 

Schlenoff, C., Ciocoiu, M., Libes, D., and Gruninger, M.,  "Process Specification Language: Results of the First Pilot Implementation," Proceedings of the 1999 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE), 1999.

 

Schlenoff, C., Denno, P., Ivester, R., Libes, D., and Szykman, S.,  "An Analysis of Existing Ontological Systems for Applications in Manufacturing," Proceedings of the 19th Design Engineering Technical Conference (DETC), Computers in Engineering Conference, Las Vegas, NV, 1999.

 

Schlenoff, C., Ivester, R., and Knutilla, A.,  "A Robust Ontology for Manufacturing Systems Integration," Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Engineering Design and Automation, Maui, HI, 1998.

 

Schlenoff, C., Knutilla, A., and Ray, S.,  "Requirements for Modeling Manufacturing Process: A New Perspective," Proceedings of the DETC'97: 1997 ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences, Sacramento, CA, 1997.