DETAILED ACTION
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 .
Claim Status
Claim 21 has been added. Claims 1-21 are pending in the application and have been examined.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 1-21 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
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.
Claim(s) 1-6, 8-15, and 17-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Pascu et al. (US 2012/0323531 A1) hereinafter Pascu, Campanella et al. (US 2020/0234517 A1) hereinafter Campanella, Bense et al. (US 2016/0238486 A1) hereinafter Bense, and Atkinson et al (US 2022/0192592 A1) hereinafter Atkinson.
Claim 1:
Pascu discloses a method, comprising: recording operation of equipment
Pascu doesn’t explicitly disclose transforming the first audio file into first image data that includes a mel spectrogram; and recording audio operation at a plurality of locations.
However, Campanella does disclose transforming the first audio file into first image data that includes a mel spectrogram [Para. 0062].
Further, Bense discloses recording audio operation at a plurality of locations [Para. 0030].
Finally, Atkinson discloses previous diagnoses of the same component [¶143].
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to combine the invention of Pascu with the disclosure of Campanella to provide a means of transmitting information to be processed by a computer for analysis.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to combine the invention of Pascu and Campanella with the disclosure of Bense to better record sound on different parts of the machine thus providing more data to analyze more parts of the engine.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to combine the invention of Pascu, Campanella, and Bense with the previous mechanical equipment sound data to have more specific data regarding the sounds of the equipment thus improving diagnosis.
Claim 2:
Pascu, Campanella, Bense, and Atkinson, as shown in the rejection above, disclose all the limitations of claim 1.
Pascu also discloses further comprising: determining a failure mode of the equipment in the undesired operation of the equipment. [Paras. 0017-0018]
Claim 3:
Pascu, Campanella, Bense, and Atkinson, as shown in the rejection above, disclose all the limitations of claim 1.
Pascu also discloses further comprising one or more of changing the operation of the equipment based on the failure mode that is determined; or directing repair of the equipment based on the failure mode that is determined. [Paras. 0017-0018; Fig. 2, Item 46]
Claim 4:
Pascu, Campanella, Bense, and Atkinson, as shown in the rejection above, disclose all the limitations of claim 1.
Pascu doesn’t explicitly disclose further comprising: changing the operation of the equipment to accentuate at least one audio of interest in the first audio file prior to or during the recording of the operation of the equipment.
However, Campanella does disclose further comprising: changing the operation of the equipment to accentuate at least one audio of interest in the first audio file prior to or during the recording of the operation of the equipment. [Para. 0072; Fig. 5, Item 508]
Claim 5:
Pascu, Campanella, Bense, and Atkinson, as shown in the rejection above, disclose all the limitations of claim 1.
Pascu doesn’t explicitly wherein the equipment is included in a vehicle system and changing the operation of the equipment includes changing a throttle or an engine speed of the vehicle system.
However, Campanella does disclose wherein the equipment is included in a vehicle system and changing the operation of the equipment includes changing a throttle or an engine speed of the vehicle system. [Para. 0072; Fig. 5, Item 508]
Claim 6:
Pascu, Campanella, Bense, and Atkinson, as shown in the rejection above, disclose all the limitations of claim 1.
Pascu also discloses wherein the equipment operates in conjunction with one or more other powered devices, the method further comprising: filtering out audio generated by the one or more other powered devices from the operation of the equipment that is recorded.
Claim 8:
Pascu, Campanella, Bense, and Atkinson, as shown in the rejection above, disclose all the limitations of claim 1.
Pascu doesn’t explicitly disclose further comprising: receiving input indicative of whether a housing of the equipment is removed during recording of the audio of the operation of the equipment, wherein the machine learning model is configured to determine whether the image data is indicative of a desired operation of the equipment or an undesired operation of the equipment based on whether the housing of the equipment is removed during recording of the audio.
However, Campanella does disclose further comprising: receiving input indicative of whether a housing of the equipment is removed during recording of the audio of the operation of the equipment, wherein the machine learning model is configured to determine whether the image data is indicative of a desired operation of the equipment or an undesired operation of the equipment based on whether the housing of the equipment is removed during recording of the audio. [Para. 0070-0071]
Claim 9:
Pascu, Campanella, Bense, and Atkinson, as shown in the rejection above, disclose all the limitations of claim 1.
Pascu also discloses wherein recording operation of the equipment to create the audio file comprises recording audio operation
Pascu doesn’t explicitly disclose recording audio operation at a plurality of locations.
However, Bense discloses recording audio operation at a plurality of locations [Para. 0030].
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to combine the invention of Pascu and Campanella with the disclosure of Bense to better record sound on different parts of the machine thus providing more data to analyze more parts of the engine.
Claim 10:
Pascu discloses a system, comprising: an audio sensor configured to record operation of equipment at a plurality of locations relative to the equipment and thereby to generate a first audio file; and [Para. 0012] obtain prior image data based on one or more prior audio files, the one or more prior audio files created by recording operation of the
Pascu doesn’t explicitly disclose one or more processors configured to: transform the first audio file into first image data that includes a mel spectrogram; and recording audio operation at a plurality of locations
Campanella discloses one or more processors configured to: transform the first audio file into first image data that includes a mel spectrogram [Para. 0062].
Bense discloses recording audio operation at a plurality of locations [Para. 0030].
Finally, Atkinson discloses previous diagnoses of the same equipment [¶143].
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to combine the invention of Pascu with the disclosure of Campanella to provide a means of transmitting information to be processed by a computer for analysis.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to combine the invention of Pascu and Campanella with the disclosure of Bense to better record sound on different parts of the machine thus providing more data to analyze more parts of the engine.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to combine the invention of Pascu, Campanella, and Bense with the previous mechanical equipment sound data to have more specific data regarding the sounds of the equipment thus improving diagnosis.
Claim 11:
Pascu, Campanella, Bense, and Atkinson, as shown in the rejection above, disclose all the limitations of claim 10.
Pascu also discloses wherein the one or more processors are further configured to: determine a failure mode of the equipment in the undesired operation of the equipment. [Paras. 0017-0018]
Claim 12:
Pascu, Campanella, Bense, and Atkinson, as shown in the rejection above, disclose all the limitations of claim 11.
Pascu also discloses wherein the one or more processors are further configured to: change the operation of the equipment based on the failure mode that is determined; or direct repair of the equipment based on the failure mode that is determined. [Paras. 0017-0018; Fig. 2, Item 46]
Claim 13:
Pascu, Campanella, Bense, and Atkinson, as shown in the rejection above, disclose all the limitations of claim 11.
Pascu doesn’t explicitly disclose wherein the one or more processors are further configured to: change the operation of the equipment to accentuate at least one audio of interest prior to or during recording of the operation of the equipment.
However, Campanella also discloses wherein the one or more processors are further configured to: change the operation of the equipment to accentuate at least one audio of interest prior to or during recording of the operation of the equipment. [Para. 0072; Fig. 5, Item 508]
Claim 14:
Pascu, Campanella, Bense, and Atkinson, as shown in the rejection above, disclose all the limitations of claim 11.
Pascu doesn’t explicitly disclose wherein the equipment is included in a vehicle system and the one or more processors are configured to change the operation of the equipment via changing a throttle or an engine speed of the vehicle system.
However, Campanella also discloses wherein the equipment is included in a vehicle system and the one or more processors are configured to change the operation of the equipment via changing a throttle or an engine speed of the vehicle system. [Para. 0072; Fig. 5, Item 508]
Claim 15:
Pascu, Campanella, Bense, and Atkinson, as shown in the rejection above, disclose all the limitations of claim 11.
Pascu also discloses wherein the equipment operates in conjunction with one or more other powered devices, and the one or more processors are further configured to: filter out audio generated by the one or more other powered devices from the operation of the equipment that is recorded. [Para. 0013]
Claim 17:
Pascu, Campanella, Bense, and Atkinson, as shown in the rejection above, disclose all the limitations of claim 11.
Pascu doesn’t explicitly disclose wherein the one or more processors are further configured to: receive input indicative of whether a housing of the equipment is removed while the operation of the equipment is recorded, wherein the machine learning model is configured to determine whether the first image data is indicative of the desired operation of the equipment or the undesired operation of the equipment based on the input that is received.
However, Campanella does disclose wherein the one or more processors are further configured to: receive input indicative of whether a housing of the equipment is removed while the operation of the equipment is recorded, wherein the machine learning model is configured to determine whether the first image data is indicative of the desired operation of the equipment or the undesired operation of the equipment based on the input that is received. [Para. 0070-0071]
Claim 18:
Pascu, Campanella, Bense, and Atkinson, as shown in the rejection above, disclose all the limitations of claim 11.
Pascu also discloses wherein the one or more processors are configured to: concurrently input the first image data and the prior image data into the machine learning model. [Paras. 0012-0016; Fig. 2, particularly Items 26, 30 and 40]
Claim 19:
Pascu discloses a method, comprising: recording operation of a component of a vehicle system at a plurality of locations relative to the component into a first audio file; [Para. 0012] obtaining prior image data based on one or more prior audio files, the one or more prior audio files created by recording operation of the
Pascu doesn’t explicitly disclose transforming the first audio file into first image data that includes a mel spectrogram; recording audio operation at a plurality of locations.
However, Campanella discloses transforming the first audio file into first image data that includes a mel spectrogram [Para. 0062].
Further, Bense discloses recording audio operation at a plurality of locations. [Para. 0030]
Finally, Atkinson discloses previous diagnoses of the same component [¶143].
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to combine the invention of Pascu with the disclosure of Campanella to provide a means of transmitting information to be processed by a computer for analysis.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to combine the invention of Pascu and Campanella with the disclosure of Bense to better record sound on different parts of the machine thus providing more data to analyze more parts of the engine.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to combine the invention of Pascu, Campanella, and Bense with the previous mechanical equipment sound data to have more specific data regarding the sounds of the equipment thus improving diagnosis.
Claim(s) 7, 16, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Pascu, Campanella, Bense, and Atkinson as applied to claims 1, 10, and 19 above, and further in view of Reichwein et al. (US 2002/0040328 A1) hereinafter Reichwein.
Claim 7:
Pascu, Campanella, Bense, and Atkinson, as shown in the rejection above, disclose all the limitations of claim 1.
Pascu doesn’t explicitly disclose wherein the equipment operates in conjunction with one or more other powered devices, the method further comprising: deactivating the one or more other powered devices while the equipment continues to operate to prevent generation of other audio generated by the one or more other powered devices during the recording of the operation of the equipment.
However, Reichwein does disclose wherein the equipment operates in conjunction with one or more other powered devices, the method further comprising: deactivating the one or more other powered devices while the equipment continues to operate to prevent generation of other audio generated by the one or more other powered devices during the recording of the operation of the equipment. [Para. 0134]
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to combine the invention of Pascu and Campanella with the disclosure of Reichwein to turn off unneeded accessories to reduce power usage and noise.
Claim 16:
Pascu, Campanella, Bense, and Atkinson, as shown in the rejection above, disclose all the limitations of claim 10.
Pascu doesn’t explicitly disclose wherein the equipment operates in conjunction with one or more other powered devices, and the one or more processors are further configured to: deactivate the one or more other powered devices while the equipment continues to operate to prevent generation of other audio generated by the one or more other powered devices while the operation of the equipment is recorded.
However, Reichwein does disclose wherein the equipment operates in conjunction with one or more other powered devices, and the one or more processors are further configured to: deactivate the one or more other powered devices while the equipment continues to operate to prevent generation of other audio generated by the one or more other powered devices while the operation of the equipment is recorded. [Para. 0134]
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to combine the invention of Pascu and Campanella with the disclosure of Reichwein to turn off unneeded accessories to reduce power usage and noise.
Claim 20:
Pascu, Campanella, Bense, and Atkinson, as shown in the rejection above, disclose all the limitations of claim 19.
Pascu also discloses further comprising one or more of determining a failure mode of the component in the undesired operation of the component and changing the operation of the component based on the failure mode that is determined or directing repair of the equipment based on the failure mode that is determined; [Paras. 0017-0018; Fig. 2, Item 46] filtering out audio generated by one or more other components of the vehicle system from the audio of the operation of the component that is recorded; [Para. 0013] or inputting the first image data and the prior image data into the machine learning model concurrently with inputting the first image data and the prior image data into the machine learning model. [Paras. 0012-0016; Fig. 2, particularly Items 26, 30 and 40]
Pascu doesn’t explicitly disclose changing the operation of the component to accentuate at least one audio of interest in the first audio file prior to or during the recording of the operation of the component; deactivating an engine of the vehicle system while the component continues to operate to prevent generation of other audio generated by the engine during the recording of the operation of the component; receiving input indicative of whether a housing of the component is removed during recording of the operation of the component, wherein the machine learning model is configured to determine whether the image data is indicative of the desired operation of the component or the undesired operation of the component based on whether the housing of the component is removed during the recording of the operation of the equipment.
Campanella discloses changing the operation of the component to accentuate at least one audio of interest in the first audio file prior to or during the recording of the operation of the component; [Para. 0072; Fig. 5, Item 508] receiving input indicative of whether a housing of the component is removed during recording of the operation of the component, wherein the machine learning model is configured to determine whether the image data is indicative of the desired operation of the component or the undesired operation of the component based on whether the housing of the component is removed during the recording of the operation of the equipment [Para. 0070-0071].
Reichwein also discloses deactivating an engine of the vehicle system while the component continues to operate to prevent generation of other audio generated by the engine during the recording of the operation of the component [Para. 0134].
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to combine the invention of Pascu and Campanella with the disclosure of Reichwein to turn off unneeded accessories to reduce power usage and noise.
Claim(s) 21 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Pascu, Campanella, Bense, and Atkinson as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Parvaneh et al. (US 2019/0192110 A1) hereinafter Parvaneh.
Claim 21:
Pascu, Campanella, Bense, and Atkinson, as shown in the rejection above, disclose all the limitations of claim 1.
Pascu doesn’t explicitly disclose wherein: the machine learning model comprises an input layer, a plurality of hidden layers and an output layer; the hidden layers perform nonlinear transformations of the first image data and the prior image data input into the input layer.
However, Parvaneh does disclose wherein: the machine learning model comprises an input layer, a plurality of hidden layers and an output layer; [Para. 0111] the hidden layers perform nonlinear transformations of the first image data and the prior image data input into the input layer [Para. 0111].
Further, Pascu discloses the inputting comprises inputting the first image data and the prior image data into the input layer; [Paras. 0012-0016; Fig. 2, particularly Items 30 and 40] the output layer outputs a result that is indicative of a desired operation of the equipment or an undesired operation of the equipment, based on the nonlinear transformations of the first image data and the prior image data. [Paras. 0012-0016; Fig. 2, particularly Items 30 and 40]
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to combine the invention of Pascu, Campanella, Bense, and Atkinson with machine learning model of Parvaneh to provide a known machine learning framework to the machine learning of Pascu to provide an indication of defective equipment based on a sound input.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to KURT P LIETHEN whose telephone number is (313)446-6596. The examiner can normally be reached Mon - Fri, 8 AM - 4 PM.
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KURT P. LIETHEN
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 3747
/KURT PHILIP LIETHEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3747