DETAILED ACTION
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection on 03/24/2026. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Therefore, Applicant's claims filed on 03/09/2026 have been entered.
Claims 1, 3 – 10 and 12 - 20 have been presented for examination. Claims 1, 10, and 16 are currently amended. Claims 2 and 11 are cancelled.
Claims 1, 3 – 10, 12 - 20 have been considered under “2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance” 84 Fed. Reg. 50 (7 January 2019). Claims 1, 3, 6, 8 – 10, 12 – 13 and 15 do not recite an abstract idea at Step 2A, Prong I. Claims 4 – 5, 7, 14 and 16 - 20 recite additional elements that amount to significantly more at Step 2B. Specifically, there is recited in claims 4 – 5, 7, 14 and 16 - 20 (as incorporated from claim 1, and similarly from claim 10 and 16) “receiving … first measurements from a plurality of sensors of a portable device … at a first location” and “generating … a first point in a digital representation” and “after moving the portable device from the first location to a second location … receiving … second measurements” and “in response to receiving the second measurements … updating … the digital representation” which covers other than well-understood, routine, and conventional activity when viewed as an ordered combination (see Applicant’s arguments, dated 09/25/2023, Pages 11 – 12 “Regarding Step 2B, the MPEP states that, "Examiners should answer this question by first identifying whether there are any additional elements (features/limitations/steps) recited in the claim beyond the judicial exception(s), and then evaluating those additional elements individually and in combination to determine whether they contribute an inventive concept (i.e., amount to significantly more than the judicial exception(s)).” (bold emphasis in original)). The recitation of “in response to” requires that the updating occur in reaction to receiving specific measurements (i.e., measurements at a second location that is different from the first location) (see Patent Board Decision, dated 09/30/2025, Page 7 “Our reviewing court has stated that the phrase ‘[i]n response to’ connotes that the second event occur in reaction to the first event." Am. Calcar, Inc. v. Am. Honda Motor Co., 651 F.3d 1318, 1340 (Fed. Cir. 2011). Appellant's claimed invention thus requires that the updating of the digital twin of the building to associate second measurements with a second point in the digital twin of the building happens in reaction to the movement of the portable device from a first location to a second location within the building.”). Therefore, the “updating” is intimately linked with the previously recited “receiving” and “generating” and “after moving” via the recited “in response to” as an ordered combination. Accordingly, the claims are deemed eligible under 35 U.S.C. 101.
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Response to Allowable Subject Matter
Examiner notes that the instant claim overcome the 112(a) rejection by amending the allowable subject matter since the “in response to” no longer depends on “after moving the portable device from the first location to the second location” which broadens the claim scope (see Interview Summary, dated 03/20/2026, 35 U.S.C. 103 “Therefore, the proposed broadening amendment would require further search and consideration over the combination of limitations not previously recited”). Therefore, a new prior art rejection is introduced over Brunner et al. “The software design of a dynamic building model service” and Brissman, J. (US 2015/0134085) necessitated by the amendments (see Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103).
Response to Claim Rejections Under 35 U.S.C. § 112(a)
Applicant’s amendments overcome the 112(a) rejection. Therefore, it is withdrawn.
Response to Discussion of Prior Art
Applicant’s amendments broaden the claim scope (see preceding remarks). Therefore, a new prior art rejection is introduced over Brunner et al. “The software design of a dynamic building model service” and Brissman, J. (US 2015/0134085) necessitated by the amendments (see Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103).
Claim Objections
Claim 16 is objected to because of the following informalities: there appears to be typographical error with double “of the building” in “updating … digital representation of the building of the building”. This is the interpretation for examination purposes. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 1, 5 - 6, 8, 10, 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Knight et al. (US 2020/0412810) (henceforth “Knight (810)”) in view of Brissman, J. (US 2015/0134085) (henceforth “Brissman (085)”), and further in view of Brunner et al. “The software design of a dynamic building model service” (henceforth “Brunner (Software)”). Knight (810) and Brissman (085) and Brunner (Software) are analogous art because they solve the same problem of modeling a building, and because they are in the same field of building management.
With regard to claim 1, Knight (810) teaches a method for updating a digital twin of a building, comprising: (Knight (810) Figure 3 assets and points are stored in a digital twin of a building)
receiving, by one or more processors, first measurements from a plurality of sensors at a first location within the building, the first measurements comprising values of a plurality of environmental conditions at the first location within the building at a first time (Knight (810) Paragraph 30 multiple devices comprising sensors can monitor HVAC and fire conditions (receiving first measurement from sensor comprising environmental conditions) “The devices 110 may include electrical or mechanical devices associated with building automation systems (BAS) for applications such as heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning (HVAC), lighting control, access control, and fire detection. The devices 110 may include IoT "smart" devices. The devices 110 may include sensors and actuators.”, and Paragraph 43 and Figure 6 - 7 an asset is associated with a location in a building and comprises multiple devices (at a first location) “An asset may be physical equipment or an object that is located within a place. An asset may be associated with multiple physical devices 110 and/or points”, and Paragraph 24 the location is down to room level for sensors (at a first location within the building) “Implementations enable search and filtering and navigation based on location, type, etc. (e.g. all assets serving a specific room-and query power meter, HVAC, lighting, etc.)”, and Paragraph 6 the steps are performed using processors “The computing device 200 may comprise one or more processors 201, which may execute instructions of a computer program to perform any of the functions described herein.")
generating, by the one or more processors, a first point in the digital twin of the building using the first measurements, the point having virtual coordinates that correspond to the location within the building; and (Knight (810) Paragraph 39 the device and/or asset has an associated location, said location comprising coordinates related to the building “A location entity may be a physical or logical identification of the whereabouts of a "thing," such as longitude-latitude coordinates, elevation, address, floor name, logical, or physical zone. The location entities may be determined based on the physical location of an asset, as well as the areas of the building that the asset serves. For example, a VAY box residing at one location may serve many other areas of the building”, and Paragraph 47 and Figure 6 the digital twin is updated with the location entities (generating in the digital twin) that correspond to the location of the sensors providing the measurements (using the first measurements) “At stage 420, the process 400 includes determining the network and location entities associated with the new device. At stage 425, the process 400 may include updating the graph representation of the digital twin of the commercial real-estate building with the points, networks, controller and locations associated with the new device.”
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receiving second measurements from the plurality of sensors at a second location within the building, updating, by the one or more processors, the digital twin of the building to associate the second measurements received from the plurality of sensors with a second point in the digital twin of the building having virtual coordinates that correspond to the second location of the portable device within the building (Knight (810) Paragraph 48 a user can manually add devices in the building for the purpose of on-boarding new building devices such as those that have been moved (second measure), where said new devices can repeat the steps of generating a point (updating the digital twin to associate second measurements with a second point) “In some implementations, a User Interface (UI) may be provided for on-boarding building systems and devices. The Intelligent Building Edge Application Server 140 may be configured to provide an application and User Interface (UI) for generating a contextually-aware digital twin of a building. In order to access the application and UI, a user may connect a machine to a network of the building. The network may interface with a BACnet. The machine may be a laptop or an IoTium edge device. The user may provide information about a building, select a building from a list of buildings, and add all or some of the assets associated with the selected building to a database. The user may then run a command, such as a "whois" command, on the BACnet to discover the devices on the network.”)
Knight (810) does not appear to explicitly disclose: that the plurality of sensors are of a portable device at a location; and that the values of the plurality of environmental conditions are at the location of the portable device; and that the virtual coordinates correspond to the location of the portable device; after moving the portable device from the first location to a second location within the building, receiving, by the one or more processors, second measurements from the plurality of sensors of the portable device at the second location within the building; that the received second measurements are from the plurality of sensors of the portable device at the second location.
However, Brissman (085) teaches:
a portable sensor device; after moving the portable device from a first location to a second location within a building, receiving, by the one or more processors, second measurements from a plurality of sensors of the portable device at the second location within the building; (Brissman (085) Abstract portable sensor device (a plurality of sensors of the portable device) detects motion and changes its control device association (after moving the portable device) “There is provided a building management system and a method for associating a portable sensor device with a stationary control device in such a system. Upon detection of a movement of the portable sensor device, the portable sensor device starts to transmit signals more frequently to the stationary control devices.”, and Paragraph 16 moved sensors would continue to transmit measurements (receiving, second measurements at second location) “In this respect, the sensor data may pertain to, for example, lighting and temperature”)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the claimed invention to have combined the digital twin of a building disclosed by Knight (810) with the moving of a portable sensor disclosed by Brissman (085). One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to properly receive the sensor measurements at the new location (Brissman (085) Abstract).
Knight (810) in view of Brissman (085) does not appear to explicitly disclose: that the updating is in response to receiving the second measurements from the plurality of sensors of the portable device at the second location within the building.
However, Brunner (Software) teaches:
in response to receiving measurements from a plurality of sensors at a location within a building, updating, by one or more processors, a digital twin of the building to associate the measurements received from the plurality of sensors with a new point in the digital twin of the building having virtual coordinates that correspond to the location of plurality of sensors within the building (Brunner (Software) Page 4, Right model of building automatically updating upon receiving new sensor data including the location of the device “This method decides if and how incoming data is processed, which may result in updates on the object’s data or the creation and deletion of new child objects. With the help of location sensing data, new objects can, to some extent, be automatically included in the building model: a temperature sensor that is marked with a location sensing tag will be represented by a new SOM object and attached to the proper space as soon as both location sensing and sensor reading data are available.”)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the claimed invention to have combined the digital twin of a building disclosed by Knight (810) in view of Brissman (085) with the updating of a building model in response to receive sensor data disclosed by Brunner (Software). One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to always maintain a building model up to date (Brunner (Software) Page 2, Right “A dynamic building model service is updated regularly, e.g. through sensor readings, to reflect the current state of the building as accurately as possible at all times”).
With regard to claim 10, it recites the same steps as claim 1 which is taught by Knight (810) in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software). Claim 10 further recites: a system for updating a digital twin of a building comprising one or more memory devices configured to store instructions thereon that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform the steps.
Knight (810) teaches: a system for updating a digital twin of a building comprising one or more memory devices configured to store instructions thereon that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform the steps (Knight (810) Paragraph 6 the steps are performed using processors “The computing device 200 may comprise one or more processors 201, which may execute instructions of a computer program to perform any of the functions described herein. The instructions may be stored in read-only memory (ROM)”)
With regard to claim 5 and 14, Knight (810) in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software) teaches all the elements of the parent claim 1 and 10, and further teaches:
adding, by the one or more processors, a representation of a piece of building equipment to the digital twin of the building; and (Knight (810) Abstract devices are integrated into the digital twin “Systems and methods according to this disclosure provide automatic discovery of IoT devices and relationships in commercial real-estate and residential buildings and integration of the BACnet devices into the digital twin of the building.”)
predicting, by the one or more processors using the one or more models, environmental effects of the addition of the piece of building equipment to the building. (Knight (810) Paragraph 24 a zoned energy model digital twin can be trained)
With regard to claim 6, Knight (810) in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software) teaches all the elements of the parent claim 1, and further teaches:
wherein the point is first point, the method further comprising: generating, by the one or more processors, digital twins of subspaces within the building using the one or more models, wherein the location is within the subspace building (Knight (810) Paragraph 42 and Figure 7 locations can be restricted to a specific zone or space or space zone (subspaces within the building), and the location could be within such a space (location is within the subspace) “Each of the location entities, such as tower, building, floor, company, space zone, space, and zone, correspond to a logical or physical location associated with the building.”
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, and Paragraph 39 location entities can be their own digital twin (generating digital twins of subspaces within the building) “Location entities may have their own digital twin that defines relationships between the physical and logical locations. The digital twin of the location entities may interface with the digital twin of the asset.”, and Paragraph 24 an zone specific energy model can be integrated with the location entity (using the one or more models) “The graph database and actor model allows us to integrate with other digital twins like BIM, energy models … In some implementations, an energy model may be calibrated for HVAC zones based on a representation of a building's digital twin. Implementations according to this disclosure may leverage machine learning in which the inputs may be varied to model how the building will perform in an infinite number of scenarios.”,)
generating, by the one or more processors, a second point in a digital twin of the subspace, the second point having virtual coordinates that correspond to the location of the portable device within the subspace; and (Knight (810) Figure 3 and Figure 7 the same asset can have multiple associated locations and points (generate a second point that corresponds to the location of the portable device), wherein the location could be within a digital twin location entity for a specific zone or space or space zone (a point in a digital twin of the subspace having virtual coordinates that correspond to the location within the subspace)
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training, by the one or more processors, the one or more models based on the received measurements and the second point. (Knight (810) Paragraph 24 the energy model can be further calibrated after being integrated with the location entity digital twin “The graph database and actor model allows us to integrate with other digital twins like BIM, energy models … In some implementations, an energy model may be calibrated for HVAC zones based on a representation of a building's digital twin)
With regard to claim 8, Knight (810) in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software) teaches all the elements of the parent claim 1, and further teaches:
receiving, by the one or more processors, data from sensors associated with heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system of the building at the first time; and (Knight (810) Paragraph 30 “The devices 110 may include electrical or mechanical devices associated with building automation systems (BAS) for applications such as heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning (HVAC), lighting control, access control, and fire detection. The devices 110 may include IoT "smart" devices. The devices 110 may include sensors and actuators.”)
training, by the one or more processors, the one or more models based on the received data. (Knight (810) Paragraph 24 a zoned energy model digital twin can be trained and integrated with a graph database (training one or more models based on HVAC sensor data) “The graph database and actor model allows us to integrate with other digital twins like BIM, energy models … In some implementations, an energy model may be calibrated for HVAC zones based on a representation of a building's digital twin”,)
Claims 7, 9, 13 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Knight (810) in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software), and further in view of Jazizadeh et al. “Human-Building Interaction Framework for Personalized Thermal Comfort-Driven Systems in Office Buildings” (henceforth “Jazizadeh”). Knight (810) and Brissman (085) and Brunner (Software) and Jazizadeh are analogous art because they solve the same problem of modeling a building, and because they are in the same field of building management.
With regard to claim 7, Knight (810) in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software) teaches all the elements of the parent claim 1, and does not appear to explicitly disclose: predicting, by the one or more processors using the one or more models, whether the environmental conditions are likely to cause patient discomfort.
However, Jazizaden teaches: predicting, by the one or more processors using the one or more models, whether the environmental conditions are likely to cause patient discomfort. (Jazizadeh Page 5, Right the alignment of environmental conditions on an occupant’s thermal preferences is modeled (using one or more models), where it is implicit that environmental conditions away from the thermal preferences are likely to cause an occupant discomfort, and where said occupant could be any desired occupant “Among all ambient condition parameters (i.e., temperature, humidity, CO2, and light intensity), temperature and humidity parameters were found to have stronger correlations (with higher correlation coefficients for temperature than humidity) with occupants’ thermal preferences (Jazizadeh and Becerik-Gerber 2012).”)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the claimed invention to have combined the digital twin of a building disclosed by Knight (810) in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software) with the sensor box and related models disclosed by Jazizadeh. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to better control a building HVAC system (Jazizadeh Abstract “Results of the BMS controller experiments revealed that the proportional controller algorithm is capable of keeping the thermal zones’ temperatures in the ranges of preferred temperatures”)
With regard to claim 9, Knight (810) in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software) teaches all the elements of the parent claim 1, and does not appear to explicitly disclose: training, by the one or more processors, the one or more models according to a supervised learning algorithm based on user feedback received within a time interval of the first time.
However, Jazizadeh teaches: training, by the one or more processors, the one or more models according to a supervised learning algorithm based on user feedback received within a time interval of the first time. (Jazizadeh Page 9, Left a thermal comfort model is generated based on comfort preference inputs (training the model) “Performance of the comfort profiler was assessed using the error of the model in predicting the associated temperatures (ground truth collected in the field experiment) as the output of the model for comfort preference indices as the input to model”, and Page 8, Right feedback is provided from subjects in a room during an experiment (based on user feedback within a time interval) “The objectives were to assess the performance of the comfort profiler model and determine the sensitivity of the comfort profiler to different sample sizes and fuzzy sets as model parameters. The experiment was carried out in an office building with four human subjects … Subject feedback was converted to temperature changes using a linear relationship between feedback value and the delta temperature”, and Page 5, Right an Arduino computer is utilized (by one or more processors) “The sensors are encapsulated in a sensor box (Fig. 3) that has an Arduino Black Widow stand-alone single-board microcontroller computer with integrated support for 802.11 wi-fi communications.”)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the claimed invention to have combined the digital twin of a building disclosed by Knight (810) in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software) with the sensor box and related models disclosed by Jazizadeh. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to better control a building HVAC system (Jazizadeh Abstract “Results of the BMS controller experiments revealed that the proportional controller algorithm is capable of keeping the thermal zones’ temperatures in the ranges of preferred temperatures”)
With regard to claim 13, Knight (810) in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software) teaches all the elements of the parent claim 10, and does not appear to explicitly disclose: wherein the portable device comprises a housing and wherein the plurality of sensors are connected to the housing as a sensor array.
However, Jazizadeh teaches: wherein the portable device comprises a housing and wherein the plurality of sensors are connected to the housing as a sensor array. (Jazizadeh Page 5, Right and Figure 3 a plurality of sensors are stored in a box “The sensors are encapsulated in a sensor box (Fig. 3) that has an Arduino Black Widow stand-alone single-board microcontroller computer with integrated support for 802.11 wi-fi communications … A sensor box is placed in each room of interest, and data is sampled every 1 min and stored in a central database.”)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the claimed invention to have combined the digital twin of a building disclosed by Knight (810) in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software) with the sensor box disclosed by Jazizadeh. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to better control a building HVAC system (Jazizadeh Abstract “Results of the BMS controller experiments revealed that the proportional controller algorithm is capable of keeping the thermal zones’ temperatures in the ranges of preferred temperatures”)
With regard to claim 15, Knight (810) in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software) teaches all the elements of the parent claim 10, and does not appear to explicitly disclose: train the one or more models according to a supervised learning algorithm based on user feedback indicating a level of comfort of a user received within a time interval of the first time.
However, Jazizadeh teaches: train the one or more models according to a supervised learning algorithm based on user feedback indicating a level of comfort of a user received within a time interval of the first time.(Jazizadeh Page 9, Left a thermal comfort model is generated based on comfort preference inputs (training the model) “Performance of the comfort profiler was assessed using the error of the model in predicting the associated temperatures (ground truth collected in the field experiment) as the output of the model for comfort preference indices as the input to model”, and Page 8, Right feedback is provided from subjects in a room during an experiment (based on user feedback indicating a level of comfort within a time interval) “The objectives were to assess the performance of the comfort profiler model and determine the sensitivity of the comfort profiler to different sample sizes and fuzzy sets as model parameters. The experiment was carried out in an office building with four human subjects … Subject feedback was converted to temperature changes using a linear relationship between feedback value and the delta temperature”)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the claimed invention to have combined the digital twin of a building disclosed by Knight (810) in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software) with the sensor box and related models disclosed by Jazizadeh. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to better control a building HVAC system (Jazizadeh Abstract “Results of the BMS controller experiments revealed that the proportional controller algorithm is capable of keeping the thermal zones’ temperatures in the ranges of preferred temperatures”)
Claims 3 and 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Knight (810) in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software), and further in view of Cheng et al. (US 2019/0163215) (henceforth “Cheng (215)”). Knight (810) and Brissman (085) and Brunner (Software) and Cheng (215) are analogous art because they solve the same problem of modeling a building, and because they are in the same field of building management.
With regard to claim 3 and 12, Knight (810) in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software) teaches all the elements of the parent claim 1 and 10, does not appear to explicitly disclose: wherein the building is a first building, the method further comprising generating, by the one or more processors, a digital representation of a second building using the one or more models.
However Cheng (215) teaches:
one or more models configured to generate a digital twin of a first building; and generating, by one or more processors, a digital representation of a second building using the one or more models. (Cheng (215) Paragraph 60 a child building digital twin (a second building) inherits from the parent building digital twin, where the parent digital twin could be the first building “In certain examples, the digital twin 920 can be a reference digital twin (e.g., a digital twin prototype, etc.) and/or a digital twin instance. The reference digital twin represents a prototypical or “gold standard” model of the facility 102 or of a particular type/category of facility 102, while one or more reference digital twins represent particular facilities 102, 104, 106. Thus, the digital twin 920 of a child building or building subsystem may be implemented as a child reference digital twin organized according to certain standard or “typical” child characteristics, with a particular digital twin instance representing the particular child building 102, 104, 106/building subsystem”, and Paragraph 53 the digital twin can comprise models (models configured to generate a digital twin) “The digital twin 920 and/or virtual space 925 can also provide information to one or more virtual sub-spaces 940, 942, 944. As shown in the example of FIG. 9, the virtual space 925 can include and/or be associated with one or more virtual sub-spaces 940, 942, 944, which can be used to model one or more parts of the digital twin 920 and/or digital "sub-twins" modeling subsystems/subparts of the overall digital twin 920.”, and Paragraph 4 a processor can be utilized as part of an apparatus)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the claimed invention to have combined the digital twin of a building and sensor box disclosed by Knight (810) in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software) with the child digital twin of a building disclosed by Cheng (215). One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to maintain a link between for further analysis between related digital twins (Cheng (215) Paragraph 60 “In certain examples, multiple digital twin instances can be aggregated into a digital twin aggregate ( e.g., to represent an accumulation or combination of multiple child facilities sharing a common reference digital twin, etc.). The digital twin aggregate can be used to identify differences, similarities, trends, etc., between children represented by the child digital twin instances, for example.”)
Claims 4 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Knight (810) in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software), and further in in view of Kim et al. “A hybrid conceptual cost estimating model for large building projects” (henceforth “Kim”), and further in view of Cheng (215). Knight (810) and Brissman (085) and Brunner (Software) and Kim and Cheng (215) are analogous art because they solve the same problem of modeling a building, and because they are in the same field of building management.
With regard to claim 4, Knight (810) in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software) teaches all the elements of the parent claim 1, and does not appear to explicitly disclose: wherein the building is a first building, the method further comprising: comparing, by the one or more processors, a design of the first building with a plurality of designs of second buildings; identifying, by the one or more processors, a design of a second building with a similarity score with the design of the first building that exceeds a threshold.
However Kim teaches:
wherein the building is a first building, the method further comprising: comparing, by the one or more processors, a design of the first building with a plurality of designs of second buildings; identifying, by the one or more processors, a design of a second building with a similarity score with the design of the first building that exceeds a threshold; and (Kim Page 76, Right building designs are matched based on a similarity score (with a similarity score) that is based on all the matched search conditions being sufficiently similar based on a tolerance (exceeds a threshold), and identifying the projects with a similarity score that is sufficiently high (exceeds a threshold) “Step 2: the model calculates a similarity score (using multiple building characteristics) for each of the same-use projects screened in Step 1. The similarity is simply defined as true (matched = 1) or false (not-matched = 0) for each search condition. The estimator may set ±percent range for each search condition (i.e., ±10% of gross floor area 10,000 M2). The overall similarity of a historical project is represented by the number of matches. Step 3: the projects are prioritized according to similarity score. Then, the estimator selects the projects with high similarity to use in his own estimate.”, and Page 74, Left the modeling is implemented using computers “The advent of computer technology has led to powerful uses of complex methodologies and large amounts of data, resulting in the development of more and more various empirical estimating models.”)
responsive to identifying the design of the second building with a similarity score that exceeds the threshold, generating, by the one or more processors, a model of the second building (Kim Page 76, Right “Step 4: the model calculates the average unit cost per square meter for the distinct-use space using the cost information for the projects selected in Step 3”, and Page 74, Left the modeling is implemented using computers “The advent of computer technology has led to powerful uses of complex methodologies and large amounts of data, resulting in the development of more and more various empirical estimating models.”)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the claimed invention to have combined the digital twin of a building and sensor box disclosed by Knight (810) in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software) with the building design matching disclosed by Kim. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to create a digital representation of a second building based on the digital representation of a similar building (Kim Figure 5 a software uses historical building project data for modeling a new project)
Knight (810) in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software), and further in view of Kim does not appear to explicitly disclose: the generating is of a digital twin of the second building using the one or more models.
However Cheng (215) teaches:
responsive to identifying a design of a second building with a similarity that exceeds a threshold, generating, by one or more processors, a digital twin of the second building using one or more models. (Cheng (215) Paragraph 60 a child digital twin for a particular facility (a second building) implicitly inherits from the parent digital twin (using the one or more models), where the parent digital twin could have the same type/category (similarity exceeds a threshold) “In certain examples, the digital twin 920 can be a reference digital twin (e.g., a digital twin prototype, etc.) and/or a digital twin instance. The reference digital twin represents a prototypical or “gold standard” model of the facility 102 or of a particular type/category of facility 102, while one or more reference digital twins represent particular facilities 102, 104, 106. Thus, the digital twin 920 of a child building or building subsystem may be implemented as a child reference digital twin organized according to certain standard or “typical” child characteristics, with a particular digital twin instance representing the particular child building 102, 104, 106/building subsystem”, and Paragraph 4 a processor can be utilized as part of an apparatus)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the claimed invention to have combined the building design matching disclosed by Knight (810) in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software), and further in view of Kim with the child digital twin of a building disclosed by Cheng (215). One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to maintain a link between for further analysis between related digital twins (Cheng (215) Paragraph 60 “In certain examples, multiple digital twin instances can be aggregated into a digital twin aggregate ( e.g., to represent an accumulation or combination of multiple child facilities sharing a common reference digital twin, etc.). The digital twin aggregate can be used to identify differences, similarities, trends, etc., between children represented by the child digital twin instances, for example.”)
Claims 16 – 17 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Jazizadeh in view of Knight (810), and further in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Sotware). Jazizadeh and Knight (810) and Brissman (085) and Brunner (Software) are analogous art because they solve the same problem of modeling a building, and because they are in the same field of building management.
With regard to claim 16, Jazizadeh teaches a method for analyzing environmental data of a building, comprising:
receiving, by one or more processors, first measurements from a plurality of sensors of a portable device at a first location within the building, the first measurements comprising values of a plurality of environmental conditions at the first location of the portable device within the building at a first time; (Jazizadeh Page 5, Right and Figure 3 “The data from sensors is used for both comfort profiling and occupancy estimation; therefore, a combination of eight sensors was used. The sensors are encapsulated in a sensor box (Fig. 3) that has an Arduino Black Widow stand-alone single-board microcontroller computer with integrated support for 802.11 wi-fi communications … A sensor box is placed in each room of interest, and data is sampled every 1 min and stored in a central database.”
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receiving, by the one or more processors, an indication of a comfort level of a user located within the building; (Jazizadeh Page 8, Right feedback is provided from subjects in a room during an experiment “The objectives were to assess the performance of the comfort profiler model and determine the sensitivity of the comfort profiler to different sample sizes and fuzzy sets as model parameters. The experiment was carried out in an office building with four human subjects … Subject feedback was converted to temperature changes using a linear relationship between feedback value and the delta temperature”, and Figure 2 and Page 5, Right a mobile app associated with a smartphone (by one or more processors) is used to obtain the comfort feedback “For mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets, the five nearest buildings to a user’s location are presented”
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responsive to the indication of the comfort level being associated with a time within a time interval of the first time, correlating, by the one or more processors, the first measurements with the indication of the comfort level of the user; and (Jazizadeh Page 9, Left a thermal comfort model is generated based on comfort preference inputs “Performance of the comfort profiler was assessed using the error of the model in predicting the associated temperatures (ground truth collected in the field experiment) as the output of the model for comfort preference indices as the input to model”, and Page 5, Right the comfort model is correlated with ambient conditions “Among all ambient condition parameters (i.e., temperature, humidity, CO2, and light intensity), temperature and humidity parameters were found to have stronger correlations (with higher correlation coefficients for temperature than humidity) with occupants’ thermal preferences (Jazizadeh and Becerik-Gerber 2012).”, and Page 5, Right the correlating could be performed on an Android computer (by the one or more processors))
updating a digital representation of the building to associate the indication of the comfort level of the user. (Jazizadeh Page 5, Right a comfort preferences model is computed based on the selected ambient condition parameters “To compute models of user comfort preferences, subjective human data and objective sensor data are fused. To identify the most influential ambient condition parameters, a field experiment was conducted over a period of two months in four zones of an office building, equipped with sensor boxes.”)
Jazizadeh does not appear to explicitly disclose: generating, by the one or more processors, a first point in the digital representation of the building using the first measurements, the first point having virtual coordinates that correspond to the first location of the portable device within the building; receiving the second measurements from the plurality of sensors of the portable device at the second location within the building, updating, by the one or more processors, the digital representation of the building to associate the second measurements received from the portable device with a second point in the digital representation of the building of the building having virtual coordinates that correspond to the second location of the portable device within the building and the indication of the comfort level of the user.
However Knight (810) teaches:
generating, by the one or more processors, a first point in a digital representation of a building using first measurements, the first point having virtual coordinates that correspond to a first location within the building; and (Knight (810) Paragraph 39 the device and/or asset has an associated location, said location comprising coordinates related to the building “A location entity may be a physical or logical identification of the whereabouts of a "thing," such as longitude-latitude coordinates, elevation, address, floor name, logical, or physical zone. The location entities may be determined based on the physical location of an asset, as well as the areas of the building that the asset serves. For example, a VAV box residing at one location may serve many other areas of the building”, and Paragraph 47 and Figure 6 the digital twin is updated with the location entities (generating in the digital representation) that correspond to the location of the sensors providing the measurements (using the first measurements) “At stage 420, the process 400 includes determining the network and location entities associated with the new device. At stage 425, the process 400 may include updating the graph representation of the digital twin of the commercial real-estate building with the points, networks, controller and locations associated with the new device.”
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receiving second measurements from a plurality of sensors at a second location within the building, updating, by the one or more processors, the digital representation of the building to associate second measurements received from a plurality of sensors with a second point in the digital representation of the building having virtual coordinates that correspond to a second location of the plurality of sensors within the building and comfort level of the user (Knight (810) Paragraph 48 a user can manually add devices in the building for the purpose of on-boarding new building devices such as those that have been moved (second measure), where said new devices can repeat the steps of generating a point (updating the digital representation to associate second measurements with a second point) “In some implementations, a User Interface (UI) may be provided for on-boarding building systems and devices. The Intelligent Building Edge Application Server 140 may be configured to provide an application and User Interface (UI) for generating a contextually-aware digital twin of a building. In order to access the application and UI, a user may connect a machine to a network of the building. The network may interface with a BACnet. The machine may be a laptop or an IoTium edge device. The user may provide information about a building, select a building from a list of buildings, and add all or some of the assets associated with the selected building to a database. The user may then run a command, such as a "whois" command, on the BACnet to discover the devices on the network.”, and Paragraph 39 a desired set point can be included in the digital representation as an associated entity, where the comfort level of Jazizadeh is analogous to a set point for an HVAC controller to achieve user comfort (updating the digital representation to associate measurements with an indication of a comfort level of a user) “An IoT contextually-aware digital twin of a commercial real-estate building may be generated based on an IoT data model schema that defines various entities associated with a "thing", such as a type, network, manufacturer, controller, point, asset, and location … A point may be a configuration value, such as a setpoint value or a schedule”)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the claimed invention to have combined the thermal modeling of zones based on comfort preferences disclosed by Jazizadeh with the digital representation of a building comprising integrated models disclosed by Knight (810). One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to calibrate a model to a real-time building state (Knight (810) Paragraph 27 “An actor that triggers a rule may query connected devices and assets to find an optimum solution based on the current situation of the system. Once data related to various solutions is received, the best option may be determined based on pre-determined constraints and settings, such as energy usage, time required, etc. In some implementations, device analytics may be provided to model expected performance of a device based on a current state, and the device may be controlled based on computations in real-time using context aware data”).
Jazizadeh in view of Knight (810) does not appear to explicitly disclose: after moving the portable device from the first location to a second location within the building, receiving, by the one or more processors, second measurements from the plurality of sensors of the portable device at the second location within the building;
However, Brissman (085) teaches:
after moving a portable device from a first location to a second location within a building, receiving, by the one or more processors, second measurements from a plurality of sensors of the portable device at the second location within the building; (Brissman (085) Abstract portable sensor device (a plurality of sensors of the portable device) detects motion and changes its control device association (after moving the portable device) “There is provided a building management system and a method for associating a portable sensor device with a stationary control device in such a system. Upon detection of a movement of the portable sensor device, the portable sensor device starts to transmit signals more frequently to the stationary control devices.”, and Paragraph 16 moved sensors would continue to transmit measurements (receiving, second measurements at second location) “In this respect, the sensor data may pertain to, for example, lighting and temperature”)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the claimed invention to have combined the digital representation of a building disclosed by Jazizadeh in view of Knight (810) with the moving of a portable sensor disclosed by Brissman (085). One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to properly receive the sensor measurements at the new location (Brissman (085) Abstract).
Jazizadeh in view of Knight (810), and further in view of Brissman (085) does not appear to explicitly disclose: that the updating is in response to receiving the second measurements from the plurality of sensors of the portable device at the second location within the building.
However, Brunner (Software) teaches:
in response to receiving measurements from a plurality of sensors at a location within a building, updating, by one or more processors, a digital representation of the building to associate the measurements received from the plurality of sensors with a new point in the digital representation of the building having virtual coordinates that correspond to the location of plurality of sensors within the building (Brunner (Software) Page 4, Right model of building automatically updating upon receiving new sensor data including the location of the device “This method decides if and how incoming data is processed, which may result in updates on the object’s data or the creation and deletion of new child objects. With the help of location sensing data, new objects can, to some extent, be automatically included in the building model: a temperature sensor that is marked with a location sensing tag will be represented by a new SOM object and attached to the proper space as soon as both location sensing and sensor reading data are available.”)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the claimed invention to have combined the digital representation of a building disclosed by Jazizadeh in view of Knight (810), and further in view of Brissman (085) with the updating of a building model in response to receive sensor data disclosed by Brunner (Software). One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to always maintain a building model up to date (Brunner (Software) Page 2, Right “A dynamic building model service is updated regularly, e.g. through sensor readings, to reflect the current state of the building as accurately as possible at all times”)
With regard to claim 17, Jazizadeh in view of Knight (810), and further in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software) teaches all the elements of the parent claim 16, and further teaches:
wherein the portable device is configured to receive the indication of the comfort level of the user via a user input on a display of the portable device (Jazizadeh Figure 2 used feedback is provided on a touchscreen of a smartphone
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With regard to claim 20, Jazizadeh in view of Knight (810), and further in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software) teaches all the elements of the parent claim 16, and further teaches:
adjusting, by the one or more processors, the environmental controls within the building in response to receiving measurement data collected by the portable device at a second time based on an output by the trained one or more models. (Jazizadeh Page 8, Left a thermostat setpoint is adjusting based on the thermal comfort model “In this paper, this means that the only controllable parameter is thermostat setting (set point) … The comfort profiler algorithm takes into account preferences (T^i_p) and measured temperatures (Tr) from all rooms and chooses the set point to make all occupants as comfortable as possible”)
Claims 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Jazizadeh in view of Knight (810), and further in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software), and further in view of Aguilera et al. “Prediction of Indoor Air Temperature Using Weather Data and Simple Building Descriptors” (henceforth “Aguilera”). Jazizadeh and Knight (810) and Brissman (085) and Brunner (Software) and Aguilera are analogous art because they solve the same problem of modeling a building, and because they are in the same field of building management.
With regard to claim 18, Jazizadeh in view of Knight (810), and further in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software) teaches all the elements of the parent claim 16, and further teaches:
receiving, by the one or more processors, a list of environmental factors that are associated with the received indication of the comfort level of the user, wherein training the one or models is further based on the list of environmental factors. (Jazizadeh Page 5, Right a comfort preferences model is computed (training based on list) based on the selected ambient condition parameters (list of environmental factors associated with the received indication))
Jazizadeh in view of Knight (810), and further in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software) does not appear to explicitly disclose: the list indicating whether the each factor of the list is positive or negative.
However Aguilera teaches:
a list of environment factors indicating whether the each factor of the list is positive or negative, (Aguilera Page 9 feature correlations can be positive or negative and are used in a thermal model, where pearson correlation coefficient has a value between -1 to +1
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It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the claimed invention to have combined the digital representation of a building comprising models disclosed by Jazizadeh in view of Knight (810), and further in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software) with the pearson correlation coefficients for thermal modeling disclosed by Aguilera. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to identify the thermal model parameters which add the most to a model (Aguilera Page 9 “Moreover, the correlation between the input parameters and their corresponding TA values was evaluated through Pearson’s correlation cofficient. The results presented in Table 6 show that TRV was the input parameter that added most to the prediction, as it had the highest Information Gain.”)
Claims 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Jazizadeh in view of Knight (810), and further in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software), and further in view of Borowka et al. (US 2021/0033299) (henceforth “Borowka (299)”). Jazizadeh and Knight (810) and Brissman (085) and Brunner (Software) and Borowka (299) are analogous art because they solve the same problem of modeling a building, and because they are in the same field of building management.
With regard to claim 19, Jazizadeh in view of Knight (810), and further in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software) teaches all the elements of the parent claim 16, and does not appear to explicitly disclose: receiving, by the one or more processors, productivity data associated with the user; and correlating, by the one or more processors, the productivity data with the measurement, wherein training the one or models is further based on the correlated productivity data.
However Borowka (299) teaches:
receiving, by the one or more processors, productivity data associated with the user; and (Borowka (299) Paragraph 46 - 47 “The room presence detectors 24 are adapted to collect data on the usual hours of occupancy of users 26 in rooms, for which these data are obtained automatically, without the participation of users 26. In addition, these data are obtained on the basis of statistical analysis, and its result is the percentage of the user's 26 chance of staying in a building or room (this assessment can be calculated in a 60-, 30- or 15-minute time resolution).”, and Abstract “Computer-implemented predictive control method for heating, ventilation and air conditioning installations related to said system”)
correlating, by the one or more processors, the productivity data with the measurement, wherein training the one or models is further based on the correlated productivity data. (Borowka (299) Paragraph 35 the usual number of hours spent in a location is used to model the time course of the thermal control setpoint (correlating productivity data with measurement and training one or more models based on) for an HVAC system “In the method according to the invention, the time course (time trajectory) of the setpoint representing a given room temperature, i.e. temperature values in the time function which should be achieved in the future, is determined 101 on the basis of data obtained from the user 26 of the system 2 pertaining to comfort, the usual number of hours spent in a building or specific rooms of the building and fuzzy inference”, and Abstract “Computer-implemented predictive control method for heating, ventilation and air conditioning installations related to said system”)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the claimed invention to have combined the digital representation of a building comprising models disclosed by Jazizadeh in view of Knight (810), and further in view of Brissman (085), and further in view of Brunner (Software) with the thermal control setpoint modeling based on user occupancy data disclosed by Borowka (299). One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to improve the thermal comfort of a user beyond a set thermostat schedule (Borowka (299) Paragraph 2 “The system is able to constantly monitor the building occupancy status in order to regulate the set temperature outside the standard thermostat schedule”)
Examiner General Comments
With regard to the prior art rejection(s), any cited portion of the relied upon reference(s), either to specific areas or as direct language, is intended to be interpreted in the context of the reference(s) as a whole, as would be understood by one of ordinary skill in the art. Therefore the lack of a citation to other portions which inform the interpretation of the cited portions, is in no way intended to exclude said other portions. Any direct language, as shown with quotation marks, is intended solely to further point out the teachings provided to one of ordinary skill in the art, and is in no way intended to limit the relied upon teachings to only the quoted portions existing in a vacuum.
Conclusion
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/ALFRED H. WECHSELBERGER/ExaminerArt Unit 2187
/EMERSON C PUENTE/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2187