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 .
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
Introduction
Claims 1, 3-5, 7, 8 and 18-23 are pending and have been examined in this Office 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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 08/15/2025 has been entered.
Examiner’s Note
Examiner has cited particular paragraphs / columns and line numbers or figures in the references as applied to the claims below for the convenience of the applicant. Although the specified citations are representative of the teachings in the art and are applied to the specific limitations within the individual claim, other passages and figures may apply as well. It is respectfully requested from the applicant, in preparing the responses, to fully consider the references in their entirety as potentially teaching all or part of the claimed invention, as well as the context of the passage as taught by the prior art or disclosed by the examiner. Applicant is reminded that the Examiner is entitled to give the broadest reasonable interpretation to the language of the claims. Furthermore, the Examiner is not limited to Applicants' definition which is not specifically set forth in the disclosure.
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, 3-5, 7, 8 and 18-21 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C.103 as being unpatentable over U.S. Patent Application Publication 2021/0293575 to Arcos in view of U.S. Patent Application Publication 2017/0292843 to Wei et al. and U.S. Patent Application Publication 2021/0094535 to Thompson.
As per claim 1, Arcos discloses a system for navigating a vehicle using surface penetrating radar (SPR) (Arcos; At least the abstract) comprising:
Arcos discloses a plurality of sensors (Arcos; At least paragraph(s) 56), but does not explicitly disclose a SPR system operational in the vehicle to collect SPR images;
However, the above feature(s) are taught by Thompson (Thompson; At least paragraph(s) 27 and 29). At the time of filing, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to have incorporated the teachings of Thompson into the invention of Arcos with a reasonable expectation of success with the motivation of using a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way with predictable results. Using SPR data provides information about the ground condition, such as compaction, voids, cracks, etc., that would affect risk and difficulty, but would not be determined by other sensors.
a navigation server including a processor (Arcos; At least figure 1);
a route database, in communication with the navigation server, having stored therein i) the collected SPR images, ii) route segments represented by the reference SPR images and corresponding to roadways, iii) a digital map of locations represented by the reference SPR images, and iv) candidate routes represented by the reference SPR images associated with a candidate route score (Arcos; At least paragraph(s) 52 and 58; The database stores sensor data, routes, and ratings, which would include the SPR data as taught in by Thompson. Roadway is a thoroughfare per paragraph(s) 33 of the specification, which is defined as a path between two points, therefore, based on this and the background section of the specification, “roadway” is interpreted as any path that a vehicle can travel);
a terrain database having stored therein terrain information extracted from the reference SPR images (Arcos; At least paragraph(s) 12, 19, 39 and 120; as discussed above in view of Thompson, the SPR images provide terrain information);
a risk database having stored therein vehicle-specific risk data, the risk database relating a plurality of vehicle types to terrain-related risk scores (Arcos; At least paragraph(s) 58-60);
a mapping module, executable by the processor in response to a route request associated with a vehicle type to: (Arcos; At least paragraph(s) 52, 57, 58, 59, 61, 125, and 133; various routes are determined based on a route request)
Arcos discloses that routes are determined, as discussed above, which would inherently need to have a starting and ending location, but Arcos does not explicitly disclose in response to a route request associated with a starting location represented by the collected SPR images, a destination represented by the reference SPR images.
However, the above feature(s) are taught by Thompson (Thompson; At least paragraph(s) 33, 35, 36 and 38). At the time of filing, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to have incorporated the teachings of Thompson into the invention of Arcos with a reasonable expectation of success with the motivation of simple substitution of one known element for another to obtain predictable results. Determining the route allows determination of the risk and difficulty the vehicle will encounter. Each location is stored with the sensor data, thus, the starting and ending points would be represented by the SPR images. Creating routes in response to receiving a starting location and a destination is well-known in the art in order to help guide people to a desired location, as shown to be admitted prior art in at least paragraph(s) 3 of the specification.
retrieve a plurality of the candidate routes represented by the reference SPR images from the route database, each of the candidate routes associated with a candidate route score (Arcos; At least paragraph(s) 9, 19, 57, 58, and 61);
retrieve terrain information extracted from the reference SPR images associated with the candidate routes from the terrain database for each of the plurality of candidate routes (Arcos; At least paragraph(s) 56 and 58; the characteristic features are stored for later retrieval in determining routes, which would include the information based on the SPR as taught by Thompson);
based on the retrieved terrain information extracted from the reference SPR images associated with the candidate routes, retrieve vehicle-specific risk data from the risk database (Arcos; At least paragraph(s) 58 and 59; which would include the information based on the SPR as taught by Thompson);
using the starting location, the candidate routes, the terrain information extracted from the reference SPR images, the vehicle-specific risk data and the destination, compute adjusted candidate route scores for each of the plurality of candidate routes (Arcos; At least paragraph(s) 19, 25, and 56-59; which would include the information based on the SPR as taught by Thompson); and
Arcos discloses providing a map of difficulty ratings (Arcos; At least paragraph(s) 61), off-road route selection (Arcos; At least paragraph(s) 135; selection implies ranking the options), and determining an alternative route (Arcos; At least paragraph(s) 19; first route would at least be ranked as not passable and the second ranked as passable), but does not explicitly disclose rank the plurality of candidate routes according to the adjusted candidate route scores to determine a risk-adjusted sequence of route segments from the starting location to the destination; and
However, the above feature(s) are taught by Wei (Wei; At least paragraph(s) 10-13 and 16). At the time of filing, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to have incorporated the teachings of Wei into the invention of Arcos with a reasonable expectation of success with the motivation of using a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way with predictable results. Ranking the routes provides the optimal route to the user (Wei; At least paragraph(s) 3), thus, improving the user experience.
a network interface for receiving the route request over a network, and delivering to the vehicle in response to the route request, an optimized route based on the risk-adjusted sequence of route segments (Arcos; At least paragraph(s) 58 and 61, and figure 1).
As per claim 3, Arcos discloses wherein the risk database is configured to relate a plurality of vehicles to at least energy-expenditure scores, probability-of-success scores, damage scores, wear scores, and loss-to-a vehicle-subsystem scores associated with the vehicles (Arcos; At least paragraph(s) 57 and 60).
As per claim 4, Arcos discloses wherein an assessment score assigned to each of the route segments has a plurality of values based on vehicle type, the optimized route also being based on the vehicle type (Arcos; At least paragraph(s) 58 and 59).
As per claims 5, 7, and 8, Arcos discloses the method (Arcos; At least the abstract) performed by the system of claims 1, 3, and 4. Therefore, claims 5, 7, and 8 are rejected using the same citations and reasoning as applied to claims 1, 3, and 4.
As per claims 18 and 20, Arcos discloses that the sensors used to determine the terrain and difficulty include suspension sensors (Arcos; At least paragraph(s) 56, 64, and 79), but does not explicitly disclose wherein the vehicle type includes information representative of vehicles having a characteristic corresponding to one or more of: i) a number of wheels powered by an engine, ii) a size of a tire, iii) a depth of a tire tread, iv) a ground clearance, or v) a vehicle suspension.
However, at the time of filing, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to have used the vehicle characteristics used to determine the terrain difficulty for use in relating that difficulty to other vehicle types with the motivation of using the most relevant information. Since suspension characteristics were used to determine terrain difficulty, suspension characteristics should also be used to relate difficulty between vehicle types.
As per claims 19 and 21, Arcos discloses wherein the terrain information includes information representative of objects within a subsurface region or on a road surface that includes one or more of: i) rocks, ii) roots, ii) boulders, iv) pipes, v) voids; vi) soil layering, or vii) features indicative of variations in the soil or material properties (Arcos; At least paragraph(s) 13, 81, and 112).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
Claim(s) 22 and 23 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Arcos, in view of Wei and Thompson as applied to claims 1 and 5, and in further view of U.S. Patent 10,156,848 to Konrardy et al.
As per claims 22 and 23, Arcos does not explicitly disclose wherein the candidate route score is based on an estimated travel time.
However, the above feature(s) are taught by Konrardy (Konrardy; At least column 5, line(s) 53-54). At the time of filing, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to have incorporated the teachings of Konrardy into the invention of Arcos with a reasonable expectation of success with the motivation of using a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way with predictable results. Using estimated travel time is a well-known score for determining routes since people try to get to the destination as soon as possible. This is also provided as applicant admitted prior art in at least paragraph(s) 35 of the specification.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see pages 6-10, filed 08/15/2025, with respect to the 35 U.S.C. 103 rejection have been fully considered but moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior art for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument. Thompson is now relied on for teaching an SPR system. Thompson teaches using an SPR system to determine terrain information in order to determine risk to vehicles travelling over the terrain. Therefore, the combination of Arcos and Thompson teach determining risk of various types of vehicles over routes based on sensor data, including terrain information extracted from SPR data, as discussed above.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. See PTO-892. The prior art shows the state of the art.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to DAVID P MERLINO whose telephone number is (571)272-8362. The examiner can normally be reached M-Th 5:30am-3:00pm F 5:30-9:00 am ET.
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/David P. Merlino/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3665