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 .
Election/Restrictions
Applicant's election with traverse of Group I (Claims 1-49) in the reply filed on 28 January 2026 is acknowledged. The traversal is on the grounds that all claims include the same special technical feature which includes a robot controller executing a robot control process to control a robotic arm and executing an auxiliary control process to control operation of at least one of the robot control process or one or more peripheral devices. This is not found persuasive because this feature does not appear to define a contribution which each of the claimed inventions, considered as a whole, makes over the prior art. Multiple control processes to control a robotic arm and peripheral devices and disclosed at a high level of detail do not appear to be novel over the prior art.
The requirement is still deemed proper and is therefore made FINAL.
Status of Claims
Claim 74 and 76 has been cancelled. Claims 1-73 and 75 have been amended. Claims 50-73 and 75 have been withdrawn. Claims 1-49 are pending and examined below.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
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 1 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 20200282553 A1 (“Simkins”) in view of US 20140214203 A1 (Inoue) and US 20170060574 A1 (“Malladi”).
As per Claim 1, Simkins discloses a system, comprising:
a robotic arm comprising joints connecting a base and a tool flange (¶ 38—“a tool flange of a distal segment of the robotic arm assembly”);
Inque teaches additional limitations not expressly disclosed by Simkins, including namely:
a robot controller configured to execute processes (¶ 10—“a block storing part which stores a plurality of blocks constituting work units of the operating program”) comprising:
a robot control software program to implement a robot control process (¶ 10—“a selecting part which selects any number of blocks”); and
an auxiliary control software program to implement an auxiliary control process (¶ 10—“a running part which arranges run buttons for the respective any number of blocks”); and
wherein the robot control process causes operation of the robotic arm (¶ 10—“running part which arranges run buttons for the respective any number of blocks on the displaying part and runs blocks which correspond to the run buttons”);
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Simkins to include the limitations as taught by Inoue to make it easier to use a system which edits the operating program for maintaining the routine operation of the robot (Inoue: ¶ 7).
Malladi teaches additional limitations not expressly disclosed by Simkins, including namely
one or more peripheral devices communicatively connected to the robot controller (Claim 1—“ a plurality of sensor data streams”; ¶ 68—“ ingesting the data from sensors and industrial devices onto a high speed data bus”);
wherein the auxiliary control process is configured to produce one or more logic signals based on at least one application input signal received from at least one of the robot control process or the one or more peripheral devices (¶ 151—“triggering by sensor data in a software layer… Matching the sensor data with semantic descriptions of occurrence of specific conditions through an expression language”; ¶ 18—“executing analytic expressions provided in an expression language to generate intelligence information from the ingested stream data”); and
wherein the auxiliary control process is configured to produce at least one logic output signal based on the one or more logic signals and is configured to control operation of at least one of the robot control process or the one or more peripheral devices based on the at least one logic output signal (¶ 66—“Output from these expressions can then be used immediately to prevent costly machine failures or downtime”; ¶ 92—“real-time feedback and automated control systems”; ¶ 93—“The immediacy of edge intelligence enables automated feedback loops”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Simkins to include the limitations as taught by Malladi to provide improved computing systems, architectures, and techniques including improved edge analytics to handle the large amounts of data generated by industrial machines (Malladi: ¶ 5).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-49 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to BASIL T JOS whose telephone number is (571)270-5915. The examiner can normally be reached 11:00 - 8:00 PM.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, THOMAS WORDEN can be reached at (571) 272-4876. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Basil T. Jos/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3658
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