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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 04/30/2026 has been entered.
Response to Amendments
Claims 2-4, 9-11, and 16-18 are cancelled in the application.
Claims 1, 5-8, 12-15, and 19-20 are pending in the application.
Response to Arguments/Remarks
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1-20 (see Remarks, filed 04/30/2026) 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.
Information Disclosure Statement
No Information Disclosure Statement (IDS) was filed; therefore, no applicant-submitted references were considered.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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.
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1, 5-6, 8, 12-13, 15, and 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by “Takiguchi” (Takiguchi et al., US 20100034426 A1).
1. Takiguchi teaches a ground plane fitting method using a vehicle-mounted device, the vehicle-mounted device comprises a radar device installable in a front windshield of a vehicle, the method comprising:
acquiring, by the radar device, a plurality of point clouds of a scene front of the vehicle along a traveling direction and acquiring a target image captured by a camera (Takiguchi, ¶[0070]; the camera 230, and the laser radar 240 (examples of a measurement sensor, respectively) are mounted on a top board 103 (base) (refer to FIG. 4) of a measuring carriage 102 (a vehicle, hereinafter). ;
determining a set of ground point clouds corresponding to the target image according to the plurality of point clouds and the target image (Takiguchi, ¶[0032]; an image displaying unit for displaying and superimposing an image in which a feature is captured by a camera and a point cloud, which corresponds to the image and of which a three-dimensional position is known);
obtaining a plurality of ground normal vectors (¶[0057]; road surface shape model which is a three-dimensional point cloud model generated based on distance and orientation data; orientation data is interpreted as including ground normal vector because: ¶[0260] labeling unit 331 classifies the LRF data into the first group of the point cloud showing the part continuous to the street … using the fact that the laser measured point located directly below the vehicle is always the street … which the orientation is 90 degrees corresponding to the direction of running of the vehicle.), comprising:
acquiring a plurality of images comprising the target image that are taken by the camera, each image of the plurality of images corresponding to a timestamp (Takiguchi, ¶[0105]; the camera 230 captures images during the running and obtains time series image data and time of image data showing an image-capturing time of each image);
determining a camera coordinate system corresponding to each image (“Camera position and posture data” is interpreted as camera coordinate system: Takiguchi, ¶[0081]; The camera position and posture computing unit 130 calculates the position and the posture of the camera 230 (camera position and posture) based on the vehicle position and posture and a camera attachment offset.) , and
obtaining a camera normal vector for each image based on the camera coordinate system (¶[0081]; The camera attachment offset shows quantity of displacement formed by an axis of attachment of the camera 230 against a vehicle axis (orthogonal coordinate). The camera attachment offset is a value corresponding to the relation between the camera 230 and the top board 103 in FIG. 4.; the axis of attachment of the camera against the vehicle axis (orthogonal coordinate) is interpreted as a camera normal), wherein each camera normal vector is associated with the timestamp of the corresponding image (Takiguchi , ¶[0124]; the camera LOS computing unit 140 calculates a LOS vector from the center of the camera to the measurement image point in the ENU coordinate system based on the vehicle position and posture data, the image data, the time of image data, the specified image number, the camera position and posture data (camera position and posture data is based on camera attachment offset which is interpreted as the camera normal), and the measurement image point.);
acquiring movement data of the camera (Takiguchi teaches a motion stereo unit 310 and that is used for determining a stationary body, looking at a part of an image, that is captured in a plurality of images (¶[0135]), and for determining the road surface (¶[0163]) . Takiguchi further states ¶[0165] Motion stereo method using a plurality of time series of images captured by the single camera 230 is an operating principle based on the assumption that the movement of the camera 230 is known and the image-capturing target remain stationary); and
obtaining the plurality of ground normal vectors by correcting the plurality of camera normal vectors according to the movement data (Takiguchi, ¶[0281]; When the three-dimensional coordinates of the laser measured point obtained from the LRF data is (x0, y0, z0), the laser measured point cloud of the LRF data is converted into the three-dimensional coordinates (x2, y2, z2) for the position of the vehicle with the following equations 1 and 2. Further, FIGS. 4 and 5 show positional relation between the top board 103 mounted on the vehicle, the LRF (the laser radar 240), and the camera 230.); and
obtaining a fitted ground plane of a ground of the scene along the traveling direction of the vehicle by fitting the set of ground point clouds and the plurality of ground normal vectors (Takiguchi ¶[0279]; By the three-dimensional Affine transformation, the road surface shape model generating unit 150 generates the road surface shape model representing with the ENU coordinates the laser measured point cloud corresponding to the image in which the measurement image point is specified.).
5. Takiguchi teaches the ground plane fitting method according to claim 1. Takiguchi further teaches further comprising: setting a coordinate axis pointing to a sky of a camera coordinate system of the camera as the camera normal vector (Takiguchi, See Fig. 5 exhibits camera 230 and y-axis pointing to the sky;
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6. Takiguchi teaches the ground plane fitting method according to claim 5. Takiguchi further teaches wherein the acquiring a plurality of images comprising the target image and determining the camera coordinate system corresponding to each image further comprises: associating each camera normal vector with the timestamp of the corresponding image (Takiguchi , ¶[0124]; the camera LOS computing unit 140 calculates a LOS vector from the center of the camera to the measurement image point in the ENU coordinate system based on the vehicle position and posture data, the image data, the time of image data, the specified image number, the camera position and posture data, and the measurement image point.).
Claim 8 and claim 15 are similarly analyzed as analogous claim 1.
Claim 12 and claim 19 are similarly analyzed as analogous claim 5.
Claim 13 and claim 20 are similarly analyzed as analogous claim 6.
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.
Claims 7 and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Takiguchi in view of “Du” (Du et al., US 20230215026 A1), previously cited by examiner but not relied upon.
7. Takiguchi teaches the ground plane fitting method according to claim 1. Takiguchi further teaches wherein obtaining the plurality of ground normal vectors by correcting the plurality of camera normal vectors according to the movement data comprises:
obtaining a gravitational acceleration from the movement data (Takiguchi ¶[0108] GPS/IMU data (the distance data, the angle velocity data, and the positioning data) obtained by each measuring sensor of the vehicle, the image data, the time of image data, and the LRF data (orientation/distance data);. Interpretation: Takiguchi teaches that the IMU data (i.e., movement data) includes velocity data and time stamped data from which gravitational acceleration may be obtained); and
correcting each camera normal vector to a corresponding ground normal vector by correcting a rotation matrix of a camera pose of the camera according to a direction of the gravitational acceleration (interpretation of “a direction of the gravitational acceleration” is according to Specification ¶[0048]; the direction of the gravitational acceleration is the same as a direction pointing to a center of the earth) (Takiguchi teaches correcting the laser range finder data using the vehicle position and radar data: ¶[0263]; the three-dimensional Affine transformation of the LRF data based on the position and posture of the vehicle and the position and posture of the laser radar 240 (i.e., including ground normal)).
Takiguchi does not explicitly disclose correcting each camera normal vector to a corresponding ground normal vector by correcting a rotation matrix of a camera pose of the camera according to a direction of the gravitational acceleration.
However, Du, a similar field of endeavor of monitoring an environment proximal to a vehicle during operation and determining ground planes, teaches correcting each camera normal vector to a corresponding ground normal vector by correcting a rotation matrix of a camera pose of the camera according to a direction of the gravitational acceleration (Du, ¶[0081]; a left camera ground plane normal vector Norm.sub.L is determined based upon the rotation transformation matrix Rim and the front camera normal matrix).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to include correcting camera normal with ground plane normal as taught by Du to the invention of Takiguchi. The motivation to do so would be to determine alignment to improve uneven ground, lane and environment sensing.
Claim 14 is similarly analyzed as analogous claim 7.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to CHANDHANA PEDAPATI whose telephone number is (571)272-5325. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8:30am-6pm (ET).
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Chan Park can be reached at 5712727409. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/CHANDHANA PEDAPATI/Examiner, Art Unit 2669 /CHAN S PARK/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2669
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