DETAILED ACTION
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 09/29/2025 has been entered.
Claims 1-4 and 6-20 are currently pending and examined below. Claims 1, 10 and 20 have been amended.
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 Amendment
Applicant’s arguments, see pages 11-13, filed 09/29/2025, with respect to claims 1-4 and 6-20 have been fully considered and are persuasive. The claim rejections under 35 U.S.C. 103 of claims 1-4 and 6-20 have been withdrawn.
Claim Objections
Claims 15 and 19 are objected to because of the following informalities:
In claim 15, “orientation of a wheels” appears to be typographical errors of “orientation of the wheel”.
In claim 19, “the plurality of wheel” appears to be typographical errors of “the plurality of wheels”.
Appropriate corrections are required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-4 and 6-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
In claims 1-4, 9-12, 14 and 19-20, the recitations “training wheel motion data”, “prior wheel motion data” and “wheel motion data” are unclear. It is unclear why training wheel motion data is received, but then prior wheel motion data is used for training and not the received training wheel motion data. Also, that the prior wheel motion data is used for training but the trained model is based on the wheel motion data and not the prior wheel motion data. They appear to be the same thing – wheel motion data or a segment of wheel motion data partitioned from the wheel motion data for training a machine-learning location model. The scope of the invention is thus indefinite.
In claim 2, line 6, the recitations “the one or more signals” and “the one or more external wireless devices” are unclear. It is unclear whether these signals and external wireless devices are referring to the signals and external wireless devices in claim 1, lines 10-11 or the signals and external wireless devices in claim 2, lines 4-5. The scope of the invention is thus indefinite.
In claim 4, line 6, the recitation “the translation of the shopping cart from the first baseline location” is unclear. It is unclear whether the translation is referring to the translation in claim 1, line 16 or the translation in claim 2, line 4. The scope of the invention is thus indefinite.
In claim 9, line 6, the recitation “the translation of the shopping cart” is unclear. It is unclear whether the translation is referring to the translation in claim 1, line 16 or the translation in claim 9, line 3. The scope of the invention is thus indefinite.
In claim 12, line 2, the recitation “a machine-learning location model” is unclear. It is unclear whether this model is the same as the model in claim 10, lines 9-10. The scope of the invention is thus indefinite.
In claim 12, line 6, the recitation “the translation of the shopping cart from the first baseline location” is unclear. It is unclear whether the translation is referring to the translation in claim 10, lines 26-27 or the translation in claim 12, line 4. The scope of the invention is thus indefinite.
In claim 14, line 6, the recitation “the translation of the shopping cart” is unclear. It is unclear whether the translation is referring to the translation in claim 10, lines 26-27 or the translation in claim 14, line 3. The scope of the invention is thus indefinite.
In claim 20, line 28, the recitation “one or more external wireless devices” is unclear. It is unclear whether these devices are the same as the external wireless devices in claim 20, line 8. The scope of the invention is thus indefinite.
Dependent claims depending on rejected claims are also rejected as their scopes are indefinite.
Appropriate corrections are required.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-4 and 6-20 would be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, set forth in this Office action.
Regarding independent claim 1, closest prior arts Carter et al. (US 20200017135 A1; hereinafter Carter) and Ebrahimi Afrouzi et al. (US 11254002 B1; hereinafter EA) fail to teach the claimed invention.
In particular, the amended language of independent claim 1 “receiving ground truth locations of the shopping cart determined by one or more signals from one or more external wireless devices in the indoor environment; generating one or more training examples, each training example comprising a segment of prior wheel motion data and a corresponding ground truth location of the shopping cart;
training the machine-learning location model with the training examples, wherein the machine-learning location model is trained to predict a translation of the shopping cart based on the wheel motion data to output an estimated location of the shopping cart, wherein the translation includes a direction and a distance traveled” overcomes previously cited prior arts. The closest art Carter teaches at [0046] to use information communicated from a marker 130 a -130 c to reset the cart's position (e.g., to reduce accumulated dead reckoning errors). The closest art EA teaches at col. 6, line 49 – col. 7, line 35 to use wheel encoder to reduce tracking error and improve the performance of the motion model in predicting the position of the robotic device. However, neither Carter nor EA teaches a model to train with wheel motion data and signals from wireless devices and output a more precise positioning of the cart that would reflect wheel motion due the each wheel’s physical changes (e.g., gum getting stuck in a wheel, wheel coming loose, hair getting caught in wheel, wheel losing lubricant, etc.)(see [0089] of the as-filed specification).
Therefore, claim 1 would be allowable. Claims 10 and 20 would be allowable for the same reasons. Dependent claims 2-4, 6-9 and 11-19 would be allowable as they depend upon allowable subject matter.
Conclusion
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/PAYSUN WU/Examiner, Art Unit 3665
/DONALD J WALLACE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3665