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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
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. 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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 2/26/26 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 2/26/26 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. In reference to applicant’s comments with respect to the new added limitations to independent claims 1 and 13, the recited meaning of “states” in relationship to different “times” is the commonly known meaning of the word in the operation of elevators. A first time is measured from the moment an elevator door closes an elevator door after stopping/initiating a ride on a “first” landing floor by either picking up or dropping off passengers to when said elevator car door opens at a first destination landing floor to drop off passengers that were originally picked up at the “first landing floor or pick up new passengers requesting a ride to a different landing floor; a second “state” would be the time it takes for an elevator car to move from the first destination landing floor to a second destination floor. An elevator car has a path including a plurality of states as the elevator car moves from and to different landing floors. Shinohe clearly teaches using the internal/external image capturing devices to determine how many passengers are inside the elevator at one time by comparing information detected at different floors. As pointed out in the Final Office Action date 1/13/26, the claimed language does not exclude the use of information from cameras located inside and outside of the elevator cars to determine the number of people riding the elevator at one time, the destination of the plurality of passengers, and prediction of a possible destination of a passenger based on a variety of parameters. If applicant wants to overcome this prior art reference, the claims need to be amended to recite that the detection is exclusively made by an image capturing device found inside the car (this information must be supported by the original specification). The rejection of record will be modified to reflect the changes made to the pending claims by the amendment filed on 2/26/26.
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, 3-10, and 12-19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shinohe (US Publication 2019/0002234), of record.
Claims 1 and 13, Shinohe teaches an elevator control apparatus comprising: a detection device 35 located in each of elevator cars 21a and 21b for capturing an image of passenger accessing an elevator car ; and a processing device 40 that includes, among a plurality of elements and a network video recorder (NVR) 41 having the function of analyzing an acquired image outputted by detection device 35 and identifying individuals waiting to board the elevator, wherein the processing device determines a destination floor of every passenger based on previously stored information about the passenger’s whereabouts in the building (boarding floors, boarding floors, and date/time when the elevator user has used the elevators). The passengers’ usage history is recorded in unit 50 for later use by the processing device. The processing device further determines the destination floor of different passengers by analyzing and comparing the number of passengers boarding the elevator on a specific floor (for example the lobby) and the remaining passengers after each time the elevator moves to different floors (see for example fig. 7 and corresponding description).
As stated in the “Response to Arguments” section above, it would have been obvious to one person of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was filed to acquire images from passengers using an elevator at different times during the operation of the elevator car in order to determine various patterns, the desired intervals of time or “states” is considered a design choice.
Claim 3, Shinohe describes the identification module (NVR 41) for extracting information related to the elevator user such as face images and determination that the captured image by detection device 25 is an individual (see for example the description given in paragraphs 0025 and 0118).
Claim 4, Shinohe describes detection device 35 as a camera (paragraph 0106) and the identification module 41 analyzes face images of the captured information from the elevator users.
Claim 5, Shinohe describes using identification module for analyzing images from cameras 30 installed near the elevator doors, wherein the cameras take pictures/videos at all angles to determine if the elevator user is a person/individual and particular facial characteristic.
Claim 6, Shinohe describes recording element 50 for recording elevator usage history by different passengers, wherein said stored information is compared to images captured during current use of the elevator in order to identify the elevator users (see for example the description given in paragraph 0029).
Claim 7, Shinohe describes a recording apparatus 50 for storing images captured by different cameras (either hall cameras 30 or elevators cameras 35), wherein this information is transmitted to the elevator control apparatus 40 wirelessly (para. 0024).
Claims 8 and 14-16, as described above, Shinohe teaches recording apparatus 50 for storing elevator usage history.
Claim 9, Shinohe describes in fig. 3 the sequence of steps taken by the elevator control system to determine boarding floors as well as leaving/destination floors of each individual using the elevator system.
Claim 10, Shinohe describes processing device 40 predicting the desired direction of movement of an individual waiting for an elevator as well as a destination floor or floors of said individual based on current time images of said individual and previously stored data (using recording apparatus 50), see the algorithm describes in fig. 8.
Claims 12, 17, and 18, Shinohe describes processing device 40 predicting the destination floor of elevator users based on usage history of the each passenger stored in apparatus 50.
Claim 19, Shinohe describes, paragraphs 00106-0111, how images within the elevator car are continuously taken by detection device 35 while the car is moving from a boarding floor to a desired exiting floor (it is inherent the elevator car door will be closed before the elevator car can move from one floor to another). The images are sent to a network video recorder 41 found in control apparatus 40 where they are analyzed so that a person/people inside the elevator car can be identified.
Claim(s) 11 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shinohe (US Publication 2019/0002234), of record and Vuorenala et al (US Publication 2016/0083218), of record.
Although, it would have been obvious to one person skilled in the art that a display means would need to be included in an elevator to let passengers know the a selected destination floor, Shinohe does not specifically describe a display means.
However, Vuorenala et al teaches an elevator system comprising a plurality of elevators cars A-D, an elevator control circuit 11, a call device 1, sensing means such as cameras 20, and display 3 for communicating information to passenger 2, wherein the control circuit comprises means 16/20 for generating elevator traffic data and said display is used by the control circuit to signal information to the passenger.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one person of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was filed to use a display means in the elevator system described by Shinohe, since said display would alert the passengers of a given elevator the direction of movement of the elevator as well as the destination of the elevator.
Claim(s) 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shinohe (US Publication 2019/0002234), of record and Katano et al (US Publication 20120057748), of record.
Although, Shinohe describes, paragraph 0041, specific techniques for analyzing the images recorded in network video recorder 41 of the elevator control apparatus 40. He also describes that other image analysis processes can be used.
Katano teaches an image processing apparatus/method for analyzing moving objects such as people, the processing apparatus comprising a central processing unit 1, memory means 2/3, and hard disk 4, wherein the image processing apparatus analyzes images captured by an image apparatus 101 such as a camera or video camera that is capable of continuously acquiring images (see paragraph 0033). Katano further describes, paragraphs 0053-0058, how the acquired images are analyzed. In paragraph 0058, Katano points out Sobel filter being used to analyze the captured images.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one person of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was filed to use Sobel Filters to analyze images captured by a camera to identify different people, since as described by Shinohe in paragraph 0041 any known process or method can be used to analyze images captured by detection devices such as cameras and Sobel Filters are one of said known methods commonly used for the analysis of images.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Other references describing obtaining passenger images/other parameters to determine a pattern of operation for elevator systems are listed in the attached PTO-892.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Rina I Duda whose telephone number is (571)272-2062. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8-4 PM.
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/RINA I DUDA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2846