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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 02/13/2026 has been entered.
Response to Amendment
The amendment filed 02/13/2026 is being entered. Claims 1, 8, and 15 are amended. Claims 1-20 are pending, and rejected as detailed below.
35 U.S.C. 112(b) Claim Rejections
Amendment to claims 1, 8, and 15 are entered. Therefore the 35 U.S.C. 112(b) claim rejection for claims 1, 8, and 15 have been withdrawn.
Response to Arguments
Rejection under 35 U.S.C. §103 based on ROGGENKAMP and ROBINSON
Arguments:
Applicant’s arguments, as amended herein, clarifies that a shortcut path is generated, and the usage of the shortcut path for a particular pair of pair of a turn-in link and a turn-out link of the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links, wherein the shortcut path cannot be traversed for the particular pair based on the restriction (emphasis added). DELLING, Fig.1 and [0031-0032], merely discloses that a shortcut path is generated and that the shortcut path is different from what the Examiner considers as witness paths (see Non-Final Office Action, p.12 - the Examiner explaining "wherein the shortcut path being S- N3-D and a pair of witness paths being S-N2-N7- N8-D and S-N4-N11-D...any particular pair of a turn-in link and a turn-out link of the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links of the witness paths do not traverse through the shortcut path"). Even if arguendo the Examiner's interpretation of DELLING is correct, which the Applicant does not concede, Examiner's interpretation of the DELLING fails to disclose that the usage of the shortcut path is restricted for a particular pair of a turn-in link and a turn-out link of the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links (wherein the usage of the shortcut path is not restricted for other pairs), as recited in claim 1, as amended, and as supported by at least Fig. 1H and [0033-0039] of the Specification of the Current Application. Given the Examiner's interpretation of DELLING, "any particular pair of a turn-in link and a turn-out link of the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links of the witness paths do not traverse through the shortcut path" (emphasis added), wherein the shortcut path is prevented from being utilized by any particular pair, In other words, in DELLING, the shortcut path is restricted/prevented from being utilized by all pairs (emphasis added), which is different from wherein the shortcut path is restricted for a particular pair of a turn-in link and a turn-out link of the pairs, as recited in claim 1, as amended, as explained above. Therefore, the prior art of record fail to disclose the claimed subject matter as recited in claim 1, as amended.
Applicant also argues that ROGGENKAMP, ROBINSON, and DELLING, do not disclose "the modified contraction hierarchy removes a node from the plurality of nodes, based on node importance," as recited in claim 1.
Applicant also argues Independent claims 8 and 15, as amended, recite similar features. Therefore, independent claims 1, 8, and 15, and the claims that depend thereon, are patentable over the cited sections of the applied references.
Response:
Applicant’s arguments, as amended herein, with respect to the rejections of claims 1 under 35 U.S.C. §103 have been fully considered and not persuasive. Examiner provides the following clarification in relation to a particular pair of a turn-in link and a turn-out link of claim 1 in order to show how Delling is able to teach the amended claim 1 in combination with Roggenkamp and Robinson.
wherein the witness path is S-N2-N7-N8-D for each of the candidate shortcut paths N-N3-D and S-N3-N9-N10-D,
wherein one or more required candidate shortcut paths not associated with witness paths is S-N6-N5-N11-D,
wherein the shortcut path for S-N6-N5-N11-D being S-N4-N11-D,
wherein node S has (N1 to N4) and (N1 to N6) as incoming turn-in links and node N11 has (N5 to D) and (N4 to D) as outgoing turn-out links,
wherein the shortcut path cannot be traversed wherein a particular pair being (N1 to N4) as the incoming turn-in link and (N4 to D) as the outgoing turn-out link.
Applicant’s arguments, in relation to “the modified contraction hierarchy removes a node from the plurality of nodes, based on node importance”, with respect to the rejections of claims 1 under 35 U.S.C. §103 have been fully considered and not persuasive. More specifically, ROBINSON [para. 0018] teaches “the modified contraction hierarchy removes a node from the plurality of nodes, based on node importance”.
Applicant’s arguments, in relation to that the Independent claims 8 and 15 recite similar features and the dependent claims under the claim 1, 8, and 15 being patentable over the cited sections of the applied references is fully considered and not persuasive. More specifically, independent claim 8 and 15 and the corresponding dependent claims of claim 1, 8, and 15 are rejected under the aforementioned explanations.
In particular, the amendments to claims 1, 8, and 15 are addressed in the instant office action.
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.
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claim(s) 1 and 3-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Roggenkamp (US 20210333114 A1), and in view of Robinson (US 20200318980 A1) and Delling (US 20180051995 A1).
Regarding claim 1, Roggenkamp teaches (Currently Amended) A method (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0002; “The present disclosure relates generally to route planning devices and methods of operating the same.”), comprising:
providing, by a device and to a vehicle (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0123; “It should be understood that although the method 500 is described as being performed by the navigation system 130, in some examples, such method (entire or a part of method 500) may be performed by one or more processors of a server (e.g., 150). For example, the server may be associated with a service provider network/system that communicates with the navigation system 130 of the vehicle 120.”), initial routing data created (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0094; “In block 206, the navigation system 130 determines a travel route to the destination.”)
receiving, by the device, a road edit associated with the initial contraction hierarchy (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0094; “the navigation system 130 obtains weather data of locations along the travel route from a server (e.g., 150) and/or a computing device (e.g., 160).”, wherein the weather indicator for the travel route is the road edit);
identifying, by the device, paths and shortcut paths, of the initial contraction hierarchy, with changed costs due to the road edit (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0095; “Subsequently, in block 210, the navigation system 130 displays on a display screen (e.g., 140) a map with the travel route to the destination with a weather indicator along the travel route with an estimated arrival time.”);
creating, by the device, an index mapping witness paths to unnecessary candidate shortcut paths, of the initial contraction hierarchy, based on the identified paths and shortcut paths (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0101; “As shown in the screenshot 410, an alternative route, which is Minneapolis-Madison-Rockford-Bloomington-Urbana in this example, may be displayed to avoid precipitation with a new estimated arrival time at the destination and at each of the intermediary cities. The alternative route is also color coded to indicate a chance of precipitation at the time the vehicle will be at each location along the alternative route. Specifically, the screenshot 410 indicates that the alternative route minimizes a chance of encountering rain by travelling through Bloomington instead of Chicago.”);
examining, by the device, pairs of incoming and outgoing links, for a plurality of nodes of the initial contraction hierarchy, to generate candidate shortcut paths, wherein the incoming links are associated with one or more turn-in links, and wherein the outgoing links are associated with one or more turn-out links;
determining, by the device, whether each of the candidate shortcut paths is required due to the road edit (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0112; “the method 500 advances to block 520 to determines if one or more alternative routes to the destination are available that have an improved characteristic relative to the inclement weather. It should be appreciated that the one or more alternative routes may avoid the inclement weather entirely, have a less chance of encountering the inclement weather, or have shorter duration of expected overlap with the inclement weather.”);
identifying, by the device, required candidate shortcut paths based on determining whether each of the candidate shortcut paths is required;
determining, by the device, whether each of the required candidate shortcut paths is associated with a witness path;
adding, by the device, one or more required candidate shortcut paths, not associated with witness paths, to the initial contraction hierarchy to generate a modified contraction hierarchy, wherein the device generates a shortcut path for the one the one or more required candidate shortcut paths not associated with the witness paths and restricts usage of the shortcut path for a particular pair of a turn-in link and a turn-out link of the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links, based on information associated with the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links, wherein the shortcut path cannot be traversed for the particular pair, based on the restriction, and
wherein the modified contraction hierarchy removes a node from the plurality of nodes, based on node importance;
generating, by the device, modified routing data based on the modified contraction hierarchy (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0099; “based on the forecasted weather along the travel route, the navigation system 130 may determine to display one or more alternative routes to the destination with the original travel route. For example, if the navigation system 130 determines that there is a high chance of precipitation (e.g., greater than 50% of precipitation) along the travel route, the navigation system 130 may display one or more alternative routes to the destination that avoid precipitation without querying the user whether to display alternative routes.”); and
providing, by the device, the modified routing data to the vehicle (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0100; “In block 220, the navigation system 130 displays one or more alternative routes to the destination with the weather indicator along the respective alternative route and new estimated arrival times for each alternative route.”).
Roggenkamp does not explicitly teach that with an initial contraction hierarchy;
examining, by the device, pairs of incoming and outgoing links, for a plurality of nodes of the initial contraction hierarchy, to generate candidate shortcut paths, wherein the incoming links are associated with one or more turn-in links, and wherein the outgoing links are associated with one or more turn-out links;
identifying, by the device, required candidate shortcut paths based on determining whether each of the candidate shortcut paths is required;
determining, by the device, whether each of the required candidate shortcut paths is associated with a witness path;
adding, by the device, one or more required candidate shortcut paths, not associated with witness paths, to the initial contraction hierarchy to generate a modified contraction hierarchy, wherein the device generates a shortcut path for the one the one or more required candidate shortcut paths not associated with the witness paths and restricts usage of the shortcut path for a particular pair of a turn-in link and a turn-out link of the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links, based on information associated with the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links, wherein the shortcut path cannot be traversed for the particular pair, based on the restriction, and
wherein the modified contraction hierarchy removes a node from the plurality of nodes, based on node importance;
However, Robinson in the same field of endeavor (Robinson, at least one para. 0007; “In some instances, a device uses a contraction hierarchy method to determine an optimal route (e.g., a shortest distance route, a shortest travel time route, a route that avoids highways and/or residential areas, a route without tolls, and/or the like) between an origination point and a destination point in a road network.”) teaches with an initial contraction hierarchy (Robinson, at least one para. 0023; “As shown by reference number 110, the route planning platform can generate a contraction hierarchy of the overlay network. For example, the route planning platform can identify one or more nodes and/or one or more paths of the overlay network and can generate one or more shortcuts to represent shortest paths between the one or more nodes.”);
examining, by the device, pairs of incoming and outgoing links, for a plurality of nodes of the initial contraction hierarchy, to generate candidate shortcut paths (Robinson, at least one para. 0023 and FIG. 1D; “As shown by reference number 110, the route planning platform can generate a contraction hierarchy of the overlay network. For example, the route planning platform can identify one or more nodes and/or one or more paths of the overlay network and can generate one or more shortcuts to represent shortest paths between the one or more nodes.”), wherein the incoming links are associated with one or more turn-in links, and wherein the outgoing links are associated with one or more turn-out links;
identifying, by the device, required candidate shortcut paths based on determining whether each of the candidate shortcut paths is required (Robinson, at least one para. 0032; “Accordingly, the route planning platform can select the route from the one or more potential routes. For example, the route planning platform may analyze the one or more potential routes (e.g., by processing information associated with the one or more potential routes, such as a total distance, a total travel time, and/or the like of a potential route) to select an optimal route (e.g., a shortest distance route, a shortest travel time route, a route that avoids highways and/or residential areas, a route without tolls, and/or the like) from the origination point to the destination point.”);
determining, by the device, whether each of the required candidate shortcut paths is associated with a witness path (Robinson, at least one para. 0032; “Accordingly, the route planning platform can select the route from the one or more potential routes. For example, the route planning platform may analyze the one or more potential routes (e.g., by processing information associated with the one or more potential routes, such as a total distance, a total travel time, and/or the like of a potential route) to select an optimal route (e.g., a shortest distance route, a shortest travel time route, a route that avoids highways and/or residential areas, a route without tolls, and/or the like) from the origination point to the destination point.”, when one of the above route is selected, other routes become the witness paths that are associated with the selected route);
adding, by the device, one or more required candidate shortcut paths, not associated with witness paths, to the initial contraction hierarchy to generate a modified contraction hierarchy (Robinson, at least one para. 0035; “In some implementations, the route planning platform can selectively regenerate the overlay network and/or the contraction hierarchy for the overlay network. For example, the route planning platform can regenerate the overlay network and/or the contraction hierarchy based on determining a significant change, such as a closure of an entire highway, to the road network (e.g., based on processing the update information).”), wherein the device generates a shortcut path for the one the one or more required candidate shortcut paths not associated with the witness paths and restricts usage of the shortcut path for a particular pair of a turn-in link and a turn-out link of the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links, based on information associated with the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links, wherein the shortcut path cannot be traversed for the particular pair, based on the restriction, and
wherein the modified contraction hierarchy removes a node from the plurality of nodes, based on node importance (Robinson, at least one para. 0018; “For example, the route planning platform can determine a respective priority value of each node of the group of nodes (e.g., using a heuristic, such as an edge difference heuristic) and traverse (e.g., search using a graph traversal technique, a graph searching technique, a tree traversal technique, a tree searching technique, and/or the like) the group of nodes based on the priority values of the group of nodes (e.g., traverse the group of nodes from lowest level priority value to highest level priority value) to generate the contraction hierarchy. For each iteration of the traversal, the route planning platform can remove a node from the contraction hierarchy and add one or more shortcuts that represent one or more shortest routes between the remaining nodes of the contraction hierarchy.”);
Roggenkamp and Robinson are both considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because both of them are in the same field as route planning as the claimed invention. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, to have combined the element claimed by known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded predictable results. One of the ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification so that the utilization of the partition contraction hierarchy can reduce the amount of resources (e.g., processing resources, memory resources, power resources, and/or the like) used by the route plaining platform (Robinson; 0016).
The combination of Roggenkamp and Robinson does not explicitly teach that wherein the incoming links are associated with one or more turn-in links, and wherein the outgoing links are associated with one or more turn-out links;
wherein the device generates a shortcut path for the one the one or more required candidate shortcut paths not associated with the witness paths and restricts usage of the shortcut path for a particular pair of a turn-in link and a turn-out link of the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links, based on information associated with the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links, wherein the shortcut path cannot be traversed for the particular pair, based on the restriction, and
However, Delling in the same field of endeavor (Delling, at least one para. 0003; “ Methods, processes, apparatus, machine-readable tangible storage media, and data processing systems are described for best cost path routing, including minimum cost path identification, live traffic routing, and on-demand shortcut computation in a mobile navigation system.”) teaches wherein the incoming links are associated with one or more turn-in links, and wherein the outgoing links are associated with one or more turn-out links (Delling, at least one para. 0032; “In the illustrated example of FIG. 2, by way of example only, a cell 202 for which a shortcut is maintained in the global LRU cache 124 (FIG. 1) is shown having an entry point at node N1 and multiple exit points at nodes N2, N3, N4, N5, and N6. The entry and exit points reference the point at which a path intersects a cell boundary from the perspective of the direction of travel. In one embodiment, the on-demand shortcut processor 110 (FIG. 1) determines a current optimal shortcut, i.e. the minimum cost path, through the cell 202.”, wherein FIG. 2 shows the candidate shortcut paths N-N3-D and S-N3-N9-N10-D. As a result, N3 has two incoming links (S to N3) and (N3 to N9) and D has two outgoing links (N3 to D) and (N10 to D));
wherein the device generates a shortcut path for the one the one or more required candidate shortcut paths not associated with the witness paths and restricts usage of the shortcut path (Delling, at least one para. 0031 and FIG. 1 shown below; “In the illustrated example in FIG. 2, an example cell 200 or other portion of a navigable area reveals a start location S and destination location D, and a selection of eleven nodes N1 . . . N11 that could be encountered when traversing any one of a number of paths between start S and destination D. In one embodiment, each node can be processed to determine whether to identify the node as a via node.”, wherein the witness path is S-N2-N7-N8-D for each of the candidate shortcut paths N-N3-D and S-N3-N9-N10-D, wherein one or more required candidate shortcut paths not associated with witness paths is S-N6-N5-N11-D, wherein the shortcut path for S-N6-N5-N11-D being S-N4-N11-D) for a particular pair of a turn-in link and a turn-out link of the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links (Delling, at least one para. 0031 and FIG. 1 shown below; “In the illustrated example in FIG. 2, an example cell 200 or other portion of a navigable area reveals a start location S and destination location D, and a selection of eleven nodes N1 . . . N11 that could be encountered when traversing any one of a number of paths between start S and destination D.”, wherein node S has (N1 to N4) and (N1 to N6) as incoming turn-in links and node N11 has (N5 to D) and (N4 to D) as outgoing turn-out links, wherein the shortcut path cannot be traversed for particular pair being (N1 to N4) as the incoming turn-in link and (N4 to D) as the outgoing turn-out link.), based on information associated with the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links, wherein the shortcut path cannot be traversed for the particular pair, based on the restriction (Delling, at least one para. 0034; “The live traffic routing process 300 identifies those via nodes that are likely to provide the user with best alternate routes using live-traffic input.”) and (Delling, at least one para. 0004; “In one embodiment, minimum cost path identification determines which alternative routes avoid blocked sub-paths by evaluating a local optimality of the sub-paths based on static costs. Each sub-path is a portion, or segment, of the full path or route.”), and
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The combination of Roggenkamp, Robinson, and Delling are all considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because all of them are in the same field as route planning as the claimed invention. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, to have combined the element claimed by known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded predictable results. One of the ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification so that the dynamic cost of the witness path can be calculated to identify more efficient shortcut computation (Delling; 0030).
Regarding claim 3, Roggenkamp teaches (Original) The method of claim 1, wherein the road edit is associated with one or more of: a change to a link cost, a change to a turn cost, or a change to a conditional cost (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0109; “It should be appreciated that the navigation system 130 dynamically updates the expected inclement weather throughout the travel based on the current speed of the vehicle, the current travel route, and the updated weather data. The inclement weather includes, but not limited to, rain, snow, hail, sleet, cold, high wind, dust storm, extreme high/low temperature for a locality concerned, and/or any abnormal or unpleasant climatic condition.”, wherein the examples of the inclement weather teach road edit is associated with a change to a conditional cost).
Regarding claim 4, Roggenkamp teaches (Original) The method of claim 1, further comprising: identifying unrequired candidate shortcut paths based on determining whether each of the candidate shortcut paths is required (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0099; “In the illustrative embodiment, the navigation system 130 queries the user whether to display one or more alternative routes based on the weather indicator, as indicated in block 216. For example, if the weather indicator indicates a high chance of rain along the travel route, the user may select to display an alternative route that avoids precipitation. If the navigation system 130 receives a user input that indicates that the user does not want to display an alternative route in block 218, the method 200 skips ahead to block 230 to navigate to the destination via the original travel route. If, however, the navigation system 130 receives a user input that indicates that the user wants to display an alternative route in block 218, the method 200 advances to block 220 to display one or more alternative routes to the destination.”); and
maintaining the unrequired candidate shortcut paths in the initial contraction hierarchy (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0102; “If the navigation system 130 determines that the user indicated not to select an alternative route (e.g., explicitly or implicitly by not selecting an alternative route) in block 226, the method 200 skips ahead to block 230 to start navigation to the destination via the original travel route.”).
Regarding claim 5, Roggenkamp teaches (Original) The method of claim 1, further comprising: maintaining one or more required candidate shortcut paths, associated with witness paths, in the initial contraction hierarchy (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0102; “If, however, the navigation system 130 determines that the user has selected an alternative route in block 226, the method 200 proceeds to block 228 to set the selected alternative route as a new travel route. Subsequently, in block 230, the navigation system 130 navigate to the destination via the new travel route.”).
Regarding claim 6, Robinson teaches (Original) The method of claim 1, wherein each of the witness paths (Robinson, at least one para. 0032; “Accordingly, the route planning platform can select the route from the one or more potential routes. For example, the route planning platform may analyze the one or more potential routes (e.g., by processing information associated with the one or more potential routes, such as a total distance, a total travel time, and/or the like of a potential route) to select an optimal route (e.g., a shortest distance route, a shortest travel time route, a route that avoids highways and/or residential areas, a route without tolls, and/or the like) from the origination point to the destination point.”, when one of the above route is selected, other routes become the witness paths that are associated with the selected route) is associated with a link and a turn between links.
Robinson does not explicitly teach that is associated with a link and a turn between links.
However, Delling in the same field of endeavor (Delling, at least one para. 0003; “ Methods, processes, apparatus, machine-readable tangible storage media, and data processing systems are described for best cost path routing, including minimum cost path identification, live traffic routing, and on-demand shortcut computation in a mobile navigation system.”) teaches is associated with a link and a turn between links (Delling, at least one para. 0031; “In the illustrated example in FIG. 2, an example cell 200 or other portion of a navigable area reveals a start location S and destination location D, and a selection of eleven nodes N1 . . . N11 that could be encountered when traversing any one of a number of paths between start S and destination D. In one embodiment, each node can be processed to determine whether to identify the node as a via node. During live traffic routing, once identified, the via nodes are processed and ranked in accordance with embodiments of the invention.”).
Robinson and Delling are both considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because both of them are in the same field as route planning as the claimed invention. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, to have combined the element claimed by known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded predictable results. One of the ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification so that the dynamic cost of the witness path can be calculated to identify more efficient shortcut computation (Delling; 0030).
Regarding claim 7, Robinson teaches (Previously Presented) The method of claim 1, wherein examining the pairs of incoming and outgoing links, for each of the plurality of nodes of the initial contraction hierarchy, to generate the candidate shortcut paths (Robinson, at least one para. 0023 and FIG. 1D; “As shown by reference number 110, the route planning platform can generate a contraction hierarchy of the overlay network. For example, the route planning platform can identify one or more nodes and/or one or more paths of the overlay network and can generate one or more shortcuts to represent shortest paths between the one or more nodes.”);
comprises:
examining pairs of the turn-in links and the turn-out links to and from the candidate shortcut paths.
Robinson does not explicitly teach examining pairs of the turn-in links and the turn-out links to and from the candidate shortcut paths.
However, Delling in the same field of endeavor (Delling, at least one para. 0003; “Methods, processes, apparatus, machine-readable tangible storage media, and data processing systems are described for best cost path routing, including minimum cost path identification, live traffic routing, and on-demand shortcut computation in a mobile navigation system.”) teaches examining pairs of the turn-in links and the turn-out links to and from the candidate shortcut paths (Delling, at least one para. 0032; “In the illustrated example of FIG. 2, by way of example only, a cell 202 for which a shortcut is maintained in the global LRU cache 124 (FIG. 1) is shown having an entry point at node N1 and multiple exit points at nodes N2, N3, N4, N5, and N6. The entry and exit points reference the point at which a path intersects a cell boundary from the perspective of the direction of travel. In one embodiment, the on-demand shortcut processor 110 (FIG. 1) determines a current optimal shortcut, i.e. the minimum cost path, through the cell 202.”, wherein FIG. 2 shows that N3 has two incoming links coming from N2 and N4. Similarly, N3 has two outgoing links heading towards N8 and N9).
Robinson and Delling are both considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because both of them are in the same field as route planning as the claimed invention. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, to have combined the element claimed by known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded predictable results. One of the ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification so that the dynamic cost of the witness path can be calculated to identify more efficient shortcut computation (Delling; 0030).
Regarding claim 8, Roggenkamp teaches (Currently Amended) A device, comprising: one or more processors configured to (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0123; “It should be understood that although the method 500 is described as being performed by the navigation system 130, in some examples, such method (entire or a part of method 500) may be performed by one or more processors of a server (e.g., 150). For example, the server may be associated with a service provider network/system that communicates with the navigation system 130 of the vehicle 120.”):
receive a road edit associated (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0094; “the navigation system 130 obtains weather data of locations along the travel route from a server (e.g., 150) and/or a computing device (e.g., 160).”, wherein the weather indicator for the travel route is the road edit)
identify paths and shortcut paths, of the initial contraction hierarchy, with changed costs due to the road edit (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0095; “Subsequently, in block 210, the navigation system 130 displays on a display screen (e.g., 140) a map with the travel route to the destination with a weather indicator along the travel route with an estimated arrival time.”);
create an index mapping witness paths to unnecessary candidate shortcut paths, of the initial contraction hierarchy, based on the identified paths and shortcut paths (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0101; “As shown in the screenshot 410, an alternative route, which is Minneapolis-Madison-Rockford-Bloomington-Urbana in this example, may be displayed to avoid precipitation with a new estimated arrival time at the destination and at each of the intermediary cities. The alternative route is also color coded to indicate a chance of precipitation at the time the vehicle will be at each location along the alternative route. Specifically, the screenshot 410 indicates that the alternative route minimizes a chance of encountering rain by travelling through Bloomington instead of Chicago.”);
examine pairs of incoming and outgoing links, for a plurality of nodes of the initial contraction hierarchy, to generate candidate shortcut paths, wherein the incoming links are associated with one or more turn-in links, and wherein the outgoing links are associated with one or more turn-out links;
determine whether each of the candidate shortcut paths is required due to the road edit (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0112; “the method 500 advances to block 520 to determines if one or more alternative routes to the destination are available that have an improved characteristic relative to the inclement weather. It should be appreciated that the one or more alternative routes may avoid the inclement weather entirely, have a less chance of encountering the inclement weather, or have shorter duration of expected overlap with the inclement weather.”);
identify required candidate shortcut paths based on determining whether each of the candidate shortcut paths is required;
determine whether each of the required candidate shortcut paths is associated with a witness path;
add one or more required candidate shortcut paths, not associated with witness paths, to the initial contraction hierarchy to generate a modified contraction hierarchy, wherein a shortcut path is generated for the one the one or more required candidate shortcut paths not associated with the witness paths and usage of the shortcut path is restricted for a particular pair of a turn-in link and a turn-out link of the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links, based on information associated with the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links, wherein the shortcut path cannot be traversed for the particular pair, based on the restriction, and
wherein the modified contraction hierarchy removes a node from the plurality of nodes, based on node importance;
generate modified routing data based on the modified contraction hierarchy (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0099; “based on the forecasted weather along the travel route, the navigation system 130 may determine to display one or more alternative routes to the destination with the original travel route. For example, if the navigation system 130 determines that there is a high chance of precipitation (e.g., greater than 50% of precipitation) along the travel route, the navigation system 130 may display one or more alternative routes to the destination that avoid precipitation without querying the user whether to display alternative routes.”); and
provide the modified routing data to the vehicle (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0100; “In block 220, the navigation system 130 displays one or more alternative routes to the destination with the weather indicator along the respective alternative route and new estimated arrival times for each alternative route.”).
Roggenkamp does not explicitly teach that with an initial contraction hierarchy used to generate initial routing data provided to a vehicle;
examine pairs of incoming and outgoing links, for a plurality of nodes of the initial contraction hierarchy, to generate candidate shortcut paths, wherein the incoming links are associated with one or more turn-in links, and wherein the outgoing links are associated with one or more turn-out links;
identify required candidate shortcut paths based on determining whether each of the candidate shortcut paths is required;
determine whether each of the required candidate shortcut paths is associated with a witness path;
add one or more required candidate shortcut paths, not associated with witness paths, to the initial contraction hierarchy to generate a modified contraction hierarchy, wherein a shortcut path is generated for the one the one or more required candidate shortcut paths not associated with the witness paths and usage of the shortcut path is restricted for a particular pair of a turn-in link and a turn-out link of the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links, based on information associated with the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links, wherein the shortcut path cannot be traversed for the particular pair, based on the restriction, and
wherein the modified contraction hierarchy removes a node from the plurality of nodes, based on node importance;
However, Robinson in the same field of endeavor (Robinson, at least one para. 0007; “In some instances, a device uses a contraction hierarchy method to determine an optimal route (e.g., a shortest distance route, a shortest travel time route, a route that avoids highways and/or residential areas, a route without tolls, and/or the like) between an origination point and a destination point in a road network.”) teaches with an initial contraction hierarchy used to generate initial routing data provided to a vehicle (Robinson, at least one para. 0023; “As shown by reference number 110, the route planning platform can generate a contraction hierarchy of the overlay network. For example, the route planning platform can identify one or more nodes and/or one or more paths of the overlay network and can generate one or more shortcuts to represent shortest paths between the one or more nodes.”);
examine pairs of incoming and outgoing links, for a plurality of nodes of the initial contraction hierarchy, to generate candidate shortcut paths (Robinson, at least one para. 0023 and FIG. 1D; “As shown by reference number 110, the route planning platform can generate a contraction hierarchy of the overlay network. For example, the route planning platform can identify one or more nodes and/or one or more paths of the overlay network and can generate one or more shortcuts to represent shortest paths between the one or more nodes.”), wherein the incoming links are associated with one or more turn-in links, and wherein the outgoing links are associated with one or more turn-out links;
identify required candidate shortcut paths based on determining whether each of the candidate shortcut paths is required (Robinson, at least one para. 0032; “Accordingly, the route planning platform can select the route from the one or more potential routes. For example, the route planning platform may analyze the one or more potential routes (e.g., by processing information associated with the one or more potential routes, such as a total distance, a total travel time, and/or the like of a potential route) to select an optimal route (e.g., a shortest distance route, a shortest travel time route, a route that avoids highways and/or residential areas, a route without tolls, and/or the like) from the origination point to the destination point.”);
determine whether each of the required candidate shortcut paths is associated with a witness path (Robinson, at least one para. 0032; “Accordingly, the route planning platform can select the route from the one or more potential routes. For example, the route planning platform may analyze the one or more potential routes (e.g., by processing information associated with the one or more potential routes, such as a total distance, a total travel time, and/or the like of a potential route) to select an optimal route (e.g., a shortest distance route, a shortest travel time route, a route that avoids highways and/or residential areas, a route without tolls, and/or the like) from the origination point to the destination point.”, when one of the above route is selected, other routes become the witness paths that are associated with the selected route);
add one or more required candidate shortcut paths, not associated with witness paths, to the initial contraction hierarchy to generate a modified contraction hierarchy (Robinson, at least one para. 0035; “In some implementations, the route planning platform can selectively regenerate the overlay network and/or the contraction hierarchy for the overlay network. For example, the route planning platform can regenerate the overlay network and/or the contraction hierarchy based on determining a significant change, such as a closure of an entire highway, to the road network (e.g., based on processing the update information).”), wherein a shortcut path is generated for the one the one or more required candidate shortcut paths not associated with the witness paths and usage of the shortcut path is restricted for a particular pair of a turn-in link and a turn-out link of the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links, based on information associated with the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links, wherein the shortcut path cannot be traversed for the particular pair, based on the restriction, and
wherein the modified contraction hierarchy removes a node from the plurality of nodes, based on node importance (Robinson, at least one para. 0018; “For example, the route planning platform can determine a respective priority value of each node of the group of nodes (e.g., using a heuristic, such as an edge difference heuristic) and traverse (e.g., search using a graph traversal technique, a graph searching technique, a tree traversal technique, a tree searching technique, and/or the like) the group of nodes based on the priority values of the group of nodes (e.g., traverse the group of nodes from lowest level priority value to highest level priority value) to generate the contraction hierarchy. For each iteration of the traversal, the route planning platform can remove a node from the contraction hierarchy and add one or more shortcuts that represent one or more shortest routes between the remaining nodes of the contraction hierarchy.”);
Roggenkamp and Robinson are both considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because both of them are in the same field as route planning as the claimed invention. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, to have combined the element claimed by known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded predictable results. One of the ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification so that the utilization of the partition contraction hierarchy can reduce the amount of resources (e.g., processing resources, memory resources, power resources, and/or the like) used by the route plaining platform (Robinson; 0016).
The combination of Roggenkamp and Robinson does not explicitly teach that wherein the incoming links are associated with one or more turn-in links, and wherein the outgoing links are associated with one or more turn-out links;
wherein a shortcut path is generated for the one the one or more required candidate shortcut paths not associated with the witness paths and usage of the shortcut path is restricted for a particular pair of a turn-in link and a turn-out link of the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links, based on information associated with the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links, wherein the shortcut path cannot be traversed for the particular pair, based on the restriction, and
However, Delling in the same field of endeavor (Delling, at least one para. 0003; “ Methods, processes, apparatus, machine-readable tangible storage media, and data processing systems are described for best cost path routing, including minimum cost path identification, live traffic routing, and on-demand shortcut computation in a mobile navigation system.”) teaches wherein the incoming links are associated with one or more turn-in links, and wherein the outgoing links are associated with one or more turn-out links (Delling, at least one para. 0032; “In the illustrated example of FIG. 2, by way of example only, a cell 202 for which a shortcut is maintained in the global LRU cache 124 (FIG. 1) is shown having an entry point at node N1 and multiple exit points at nodes N2, N3, N4, N5, and N6. The entry and exit points reference the point at which a path intersects a cell boundary from the perspective of the direction of travel. In one embodiment, the on-demand shortcut processor 110 (FIG. 1) determines a current optimal shortcut, i.e. the minimum cost path, through the cell 202.”, wherein FIG. 2 shows the candidate shortcut paths N-N3-D and S-N3-N9-N10-D. As a result, N3 has two incoming links (S to N3) and (N3 to N9) and D has two outgoing links (N3 to D) and (N10 to D));
wherein a shortcut path is generated for the one the one or more required candidate shortcut paths not associated with the witness paths and usage of the shortcut path is restricted (Delling, at least one para. 0031 and FIG. 1 shown below; “In the illustrated example in FIG. 2, an example cell 200 or other portion of a navigable area reveals a start location S and destination location D, and a selection of eleven nodes N1 . . . N11 that could be encountered when traversing any one of a number of paths between start S and destination D. In one embodiment, each node can be processed to determine whether to identify the node as a via node.”, wherein the witness path is S-N2-N7-N8-D for each of the candidate shortcut paths N-N3-D and S-N3-N9-N10-D, wherein one or more required candidate shortcut paths not associated with witness paths is S-N6-N5-N11-D, wherein the shortcut path for S-N6-N5-N11-D being S-N4-N11-D) for a particular pair of a turn-in link and a turn-out link of the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links (Delling, at least one para. 0031 and FIG. 1 shown below; “In the illustrated example in FIG. 2, an example cell 200 or other portion of a navigable area reveals a start location S and destination location D, and a selection of eleven nodes N1 . . . N11 that could be encountered when traversing any one of a number of paths between start S and destination D.”, wherein node S has (N1 to N4) and (N1 to N6) as incoming turn-in links and node N11 has (N5 to D) and (N4 to D) as outgoing turn-out links, wherein the shortcut path cannot be traversed for particular pair being (N1 to N4) as the incoming turn-in link and (N4 to D) as the outgoing turn-out link.), based on information associated with the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links, wherein the shortcut path cannot be traversed for the particular pair, based on the restriction (Delling, at least one para. 0034; “The live traffic routing process 300 identifies those via nodes that are likely to provide the user with best alternate routes using live-traffic input.”) and (Delling, at least one para. 0004; “In one embodiment, minimum cost path identification determines which alternative routes avoid blocked sub-paths by evaluating a local optimality of the sub-paths based on static costs. Each sub-path is a portion, or segment, of the full path or route.”), and
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The combination of Roggenkamp, Robinson, and Delling are all considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because all of them are in the same field as route planning as the claimed invention. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, to have combined the element claimed by known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded predictable results. One of the ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification so that the dynamic cost of the witness path can be calculated to identify more efficient shortcut computation (Delling; 0030).
Regarding claim 9, Robinson teaches (Original) The device of claim 8, wherein the initial contraction hierarchy is a partitioned contraction hierarchy (Robinson, at least one para. 0059; “FIG. 4 is a flow chart of an example process 400 for using partitioned contraction hierarchies to determine a route from an origination point to a destination point.”).
Regarding claim 10, Robinson teaches (Original) The device of claim 8, wherein the initial routing data includes data (Robinson, at least one para. 0023; “As shown by reference number 110, the route planning platform can generate a contraction hierarchy of the overlay network. For example, the route planning platform can identify one or more nodes and/or one or more paths of the overlay network and can generate one or more shortcuts to represent shortest paths between the one or more nodes.”) identifying a least expensive route from a current location of the vehicle to a destination of the vehicle.
Robinson does not explicitly teach identifying a least expensive route from a current location of the vehicle to a destination of the vehicle.
However, Delling in the same field of endeavor (Delling, at least one para. 0003; “ Methods, processes, apparatus, machine-readable tangible storage media, and data processing systems are described for best cost path routing, including minimum cost path identification, live traffic routing, and on-demand shortcut computation in a mobile navigation system.”) teaches identifying a least expensive route from a current location of the vehicle to a destination of the vehicle (Delling, at least one para. 0032; “the on-demand shortcut processor 110 (FIG. 1) determines a current optimal shortcut, i.e. the minimum cost path, through the cell 202. The minimum cost path for a shortcut is typically based on the time cost of travel, but could also be based on other criteria, such as whether the minimum cost path encounters a traffic jam during the projected time of travel. For example, the shortcut from entry point N1 to exit point N3 could be determined as the current optimal shortcut, resulting in the identification of an alternative route from source S to destination D along via node N3 that includes road segment N1 to N3.”).
Robinson and Delling are both considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because both of them are in the same field as route planning as the claimed invention. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, to have combined the element claimed by known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded predictable results. One of the ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification so that the initial path can be calculated based on the minimum cost (Delling; 0032).
Regarding claim 11, Roggenkamp teaches (Original) The device of claim 8, wherein the modified routing data includes data (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0099; “based on the forecasted weather along the travel route, the navigation system 130 may determine to display one or more alternative routes to the destination with the original travel route. For example, if the navigation system 130 determines that there is a high chance of precipitation (e.g., greater than 50% of precipitation) along the travel route, the navigation system 130 may display one or more alternative routes to the destination that avoid precipitation without querying the user whether to display alternative routes.”) identifying a least expensive route from a current location of the vehicle to a destination of the vehicle based on the road edit.
Roggenkamp does not explicitly teach identifying a least expensive route from a current location of the vehicle to a destination of the vehicle based on the road edit.
However, Delling in the same field of endeavor (Delling, at least one para. 0003; “Methods, processes, apparatus, machine-readable tangible storage media, and data processing systems are described for best cost path routing, including minimum cost path identification, live traffic routing, and on-demand shortcut computation in a mobile navigation system.”) teaches identifying a least expensive route from a current location of the vehicle to a destination of the vehicle based on the road edit (Delling, at least one para. 0032; “the on-demand shortcut processor 110 (FIG. 1) determines a current optimal shortcut, i.e. the minimum cost path, through the cell 202. The minimum cost path for a shortcut is typically based on the time cost of travel, but could also be based on other criteria, such as whether the minimum cost path encounters a traffic jam during the projected time of travel. For example, the shortcut from entry point N1 to exit point N3 could be determined as the current optimal shortcut, resulting in the identification of an alternative route from source S to destination D along via node N3 that includes road segment N1 to N3.”).
Roggenkamp and Delling are both considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because both of them are in the same field as route planning as the claimed invention. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, to have combined the element claimed by known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded predictable results. One of the ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification so that the dynamic cost of the witness path can be calculated to identify more efficient shortcut computation (Delling; 0030).
Regarding claim 12, Roggenkamp teaches (Original) The device of claim 8, wherein the road edit includes one or more of: a global road edit associated with real time traffic incidents and updates to map data (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0147; “the navigation system 130 takes traffic along the selected travel route into account when determining the travel time”), or a driver-specific road edit associated with a requirement of a driver of the vehicle (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0096; “In other example, the navigation system 130 may allow a user to change a number of points along the travel route (e.g., may select specific cities, towns, intersections, may select or modify a specific time period along the travel route).”).
Regarding claim 13, Roggenkamp teaches (Original) The device of claim 8, wherein the one or more processors, to determine whether each of the candidate shortcut paths is required due to the road edit, are configured to one or more of (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0112; “the method 500 advances to block 520 to determines if one or more alternative routes to the destination are available that have an improved characteristic relative to the inclement weather. It should be appreciated that the one or more alternative routes may avoid the inclement weather entirely, have a less chance of encountering the inclement weather, or have shorter duration of expected overlap with the inclement weather.”): determine whether each of the candidate shortcut paths has become cheaper than a former witness path;
determine whether a former witness path has become more expensive than each of the candidate shortcut paths; or
determine whether one or more links of each of the candidate shortcut paths are newly created shortcuts.
Roggenkamp does not explicitly teach determine whether each of the candidate shortcut paths has become cheaper than a former witness path;
determine whether a former witness path has become more expensive than each of the candidate shortcut paths; or
determine whether one or more links of each of the candidate shortcut paths are newly created shortcuts.
However, Delling in the same field of endeavor (Delling, at least one para. 0003; “ Methods, processes, apparatus, machine-readable tangible storage media, and data processing systems are described for best cost path routing, including minimum cost path identification, live traffic routing, and on-demand shortcut computation in a mobile navigation system.”) teaches determine whether each of the candidate shortcut paths has become cheaper than a former witness path (Delling, at least one para. 0048; “ The pre-computation is typically based on a static cost of travel from each entry into the cell to each exit from the cell. During the on-demand shortcut process 500, an on-demand shortcut can be re-computed, or computed for the first time if a pre-computed shortcut does not exist, based on dynamic costs of travel from each entry into the cell to each exit from the cell. Therefore an on-demand shortcut can differ from the pre-computed shortcut.”);
determine whether a former witness path has become more expensive than each of the candidate shortcut paths (Delling, at least one para. 0048; “ The pre-computation is typically based on a static cost of travel from each entry into the cell to each exit from the cell. During the on-demand shortcut process 500, an on-demand shortcut can be re-computed, or computed for the first time if a pre-computed shortcut does not exist, based on dynamic costs of travel from each entry into the cell to each exit from the cell. Therefore an on-demand shortcut can differ from the pre-computed shortcut.”); or
determine whether one or more links of each of the candidate shortcut paths are newly created shortcuts (Delling, at least one para. 0026; “ an on-demand shortcut processor 110 accesses a last recently used LRU cache 124 to generate new or updated shortcuts as needed for a given cell encountered during the route search 106”).
Roggenkamp and Delling are both considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because both of them are in the same field as route planning as the claimed invention. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, to have combined the element claimed by known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded predictable results. One of the ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification so that the dynamic cost of the witness path can be calculated to identify more efficient shortcut computation (Delling; 0030).
Regarding claim 14, Roggenkamp teaches (Original) The device of claim 8, wherein the one or more processors, to determine whether each of the candidate shortcut paths is required due to the road edit, are configured to: compare (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0101; “Referring back to the example illustrated in FIG. 4, the original travel route was Minneapolis-Madison-Rockford-Chicago-Urbana with the estimated arrival time at the destination and at each of the intermediary cities, as shown in the screenshot 400. As shown in the screenshot 410, an alternative route, which is Minneapolis-Madison-Rockford-Bloomington-Urbana in this example, may be displayed to avoid precipitation with a new estimated arrival time at the destination and at each of the intermediary cities. The alternative route is also color coded to indicate a chance of precipitation at the time the vehicle will be at each location along the alternative route. Specifically, the screenshot 410 indicates that the alternative route minimizes a chance of encountering rain by travelling through Bloomington instead of Chicago.”).
Even though Roggenkamp teaches about “each of the candidate shortcut paths before and after the road edit”, Roggenkamp does not explicitly teach that a cost of each of the candidate shortcut paths before and after the road edit.
However, Delling in the same field of endeavor (Delling, at least one para. 0003; “Methods, processes, apparatus, machine-readable tangible storage media, and data processing systems are described for best cost path routing, including minimum cost path identification, live traffic routing, and on-demand shortcut computation in a mobile navigation system.”) teaches a cost (Delling, at least one para. 0003; “a navigation system on a mobile device, live traffic routing helps a user choose the best alternate route from source S to destination D as compared to their current route, including displaying one or more of the alternate routes having the best cost path, where cost can be measured in terms of any one or more of travel time, travel distance, amount of traffic and/or number of detours encountered during travel. The best cost path determination is based on current route conditions, e.g. time of travel, traffic and road closures.”).
Roggenkamp and Delling are both considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because both of them are in the same field as route planning as the claimed invention. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, to have combined the element claimed by known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded predictable results. One of the ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification so that the cost of each of the candidate shortcut paths before and after the road edit can be utilized to identify the optimal route (Delling; 0032).
Regarding claim 15, Roggenkamp teaches (Currently Amended) A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing a set of instructions, the set of instructions comprising:
one or more instructions that, when executed by one or more processors of a device, cause the device to (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0123; “It should be understood that although the method 500 is described as being performed by the navigation system 130, in some examples, such method (entire or a part of method 500) may be performed by one or more processors of a server (e.g., 150). For example, the server may be associated with a service provider network/system that communicates with the navigation system 130 of the vehicle 120.”):
provide, to a vehicle (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0123; “It should be understood that although the method 500 is described as being performed by the navigation system 130, in some examples, such method (entire or a part of method 500) may be performed by one or more processors of a server (e.g., 150). For example, the server may be associated with a service provider network/system that communicates with the navigation system 130 of the vehicle 120.”), initial routing data (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0094; “In block 206, the navigation system 130 determines a travel route to the destination.”)
receive a road edit associated (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0094; “the navigation system 130 obtains weather data of locations along the travel route from a server (e.g., 150) and/or a computing device (e.g., 160).”, wherein the weather indicator for the travel route is the road edit) (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0109; “It should be appreciated that the navigation system 130 dynamically updates the expected inclement weather throughout the travel based on the current speed of the vehicle, the current travel route, and the updated weather data. The inclement weather includes, but not limited to, rain, snow, hail, sleet, cold, high wind, dust storm, extreme high/low temperature for a locality concerned, and/or any abnormal or unpleasant climatic condition.”, wherein the examples of the inclement weather teach road edit is associated with a change to a conditional cost);
identify paths and shortcut paths, of the initial contraction hierarchy, with changed costs due to the road edit (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0095; “Subsequently, in block 210, the navigation system 130 displays on a display screen (e.g., 140) a map with the travel route to the destination with a weather indicator along the travel route with an estimated arrival time.”);
create an index mapping witness paths to unnecessary candidate shortcut paths, of the initial contraction hierarchy, based on the identified paths and shortcut paths (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0101; “As shown in the screenshot 410, an alternative route, which is Minneapolis-Madison-Rockford-Bloomington-Urbana in this example, may be displayed to avoid precipitation with a new estimated arrival time at the destination and at each of the intermediary cities. The alternative route is also color coded to indicate a chance of precipitation at the time the vehicle will be at each location along the alternative route. Specifically, the screenshot 410 indicates that the alternative route minimizes a chance of encountering rain by travelling through Bloomington instead of Chicago.”);
examine pairs of incoming and outgoing links, for a plurality of nodes of the initial contraction hierarchy, to generate candidate shortcut paths, wherein the incoming links are associated with one or more turn-in links, and wherein the outgoing links are associated with one or more turn-out links;
determine whether each of the candidate shortcut paths is required due to the road edit (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0112; “the method 500 advances to block 520 to determines if one or more alternative routes to the destination are available that have an improved characteristic relative to the inclement weather. It should be appreciated that the one or more alternative routes may avoid the inclement weather entirely, have a less chance of encountering the inclement weather, or have shorter duration of expected overlap with the inclement weather.”);
identify required candidate shortcut paths based on determining whether each of the candidate shortcut paths is required;
determine whether each of the required candidate shortcut paths is associated with a witness path;
add one or more required candidate shortcut paths, not associated with witness paths, to the initial contraction hierarchy to generate a modified contraction hierarchy, wherein a shortcut path is generated for the one the one or more required candidate shortcut paths not associated with the witness paths and usage of the shortcut path is restricted for a particular pair of a turn-in link and a turn-out link of the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links, based on information associated with the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links, wherein the shortcut path cannot be traversed for the particular pair, based on the restriction, and
wherein the modified contraction hierarchy removes a node from the plurality of nodes, based on node importance;
generate modified routing data based on the modified contraction hierarchy (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0099; “based on the forecasted weather along the travel route, the navigation system 130 may determine to display one or more alternative routes to the destination with the original travel route. For example, if the navigation system 130 determines that there is a high chance of precipitation (e.g., greater than 50% of precipitation) along the travel route, the navigation system 130 may display one or more alternative routes to the destination that avoid precipitation without querying the user whether to display alternative routes.”); and
provide the modified routing data to the vehicle (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0100; “In block 220, the navigation system 130 displays one or more alternative routes to the destination with the weather indicator along the respective alternative route and new estimated arrival times for each alternative route.”).
Roggenkamp does not explicitly teach that created with an initial contraction hierarchy;
examine pairs of incoming and outgoing links, for each of a plurality of nodes of the initial contraction hierarchy, to generate candidate shortcut paths, wherein the incoming links are associated with one or more turn-in links, and wherein the outgoing links are associated with one or more turn-out links;
identify required candidate shortcut paths based on determining whether each of the candidate shortcut paths is required;
determine whether each of the required candidate shortcut paths is associated with a witness path;
add one or more required candidate shortcut paths, not associated with witness paths, to the initial contraction hierarchy to generate a modified contraction hierarchy, wherein a shortcut path is generated for the one the one or more required candidate shortcut paths not associated with the witness paths and usage of the shortcut path is restricted for a particular pair of a turn-in link and a turn-out link of the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links, based on information associated with the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links, wherein the shortcut path cannot be traversed for the particular pair, based on the restriction, and
wherein the modified contraction hierarchy removes a node from the plurality of nodes, based on node importance;
However, Robinson in the same field of endeavor (Robinson, at least one para. 0007; “In some instances, a device uses a contraction hierarchy method to determine an optimal route (e.g., a shortest distance route, a shortest travel time route, a route that avoids highways and/or residential areas, a route without tolls, and/or the like) between an origination point and a destination point in a road network.”) teaches created with an initial contraction hierarchy (Robinson, at least one para. 0023; “As shown by reference number 110, the route planning platform can generate a contraction hierarchy of the overlay network. For example, the route planning platform can identify one or more nodes and/or one or more paths of the overlay network and can generate one or more shortcuts to represent shortest paths between the one or more nodes.”);
examine pairs of incoming and outgoing links, for each of a plurality of nodes of the initial contraction hierarchy, to generate candidate shortcut paths (Robinson, at least one para. 0023 and FIG. 1D; “As shown by reference number 110, the route planning platform can generate a contraction hierarchy of the overlay network. For example, the route planning platform can identify one or more nodes and/or one or more paths of the overlay network and can generate one or more shortcuts to represent shortest paths between the one or more nodes.”), wherein the incoming links are associated with one or more turn-in links, and wherein the outgoing links are associated with one or more turn-out links;
identify required candidate shortcut paths based on determining whether each of the candidate shortcut paths is required (Robinson, at least one para. 0032; “Accordingly, the route planning platform can select the route from the one or more potential routes. For example, the route planning platform may analyze the one or more potential routes (e.g., by processing information associated with the one or more potential routes, such as a total distance, a total travel time, and/or the like of a potential route) to select an optimal route (e.g., a shortest distance route, a shortest travel time route, a route that avoids highways and/or residential areas, a route without tolls, and/or the like) from the origination point to the destination point.”);
determine whether each of the required candidate shortcut paths is associated with a witness path (Robinson, at least one para. 0032; “Accordingly, the route planning platform can select the route from the one or more potential routes. For example, the route planning platform may analyze the one or more potential routes (e.g., by processing information associated with the one or more potential routes, such as a total distance, a total travel time, and/or the like of a potential route) to select an optimal route (e.g., a shortest distance route, a shortest travel time route, a route that avoids highways and/or residential areas, a route without tolls, and/or the like) from the origination point to the destination point.”, when one of the above route is selected, other routes become the witness paths that are associated with the selected route);
add one or more required candidate shortcut paths, not associated with witness paths, to the initial contraction hierarchy to generate a modified contraction hierarchy (Robinson, at least one para. 0035; “In some implementations, the route planning platform can selectively regenerate the overlay network and/or the contraction hierarchy for the overlay network. For example, the route planning platform can regenerate the overlay network and/or the contraction hierarchy based on determining a significant change, such as a closure of an entire highway, to the road network (e.g., based on processing the update information).”), wherein a shortcut path is generated for the one the one or more required candidate shortcut paths not associated with the witness paths and usage of the shortcut path is restricted for a particular pair of a turn-in link and a turn-out link of the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links, based on information associated with the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links, wherein the shortcut path cannot be traversed for the particular pair, based on the restriction, and
wherein the modified contraction hierarchy removes a node from the plurality of nodes, based on node importance (Robinson, at least one para. 0018; “For example, the route planning platform can determine a respective priority value of each node of the group of nodes (e.g., using a heuristic, such as an edge difference heuristic) and traverse (e.g., search using a graph traversal technique, a graph searching technique, a tree traversal technique, a tree searching technique, and/or the like) the group of nodes based on the priority values of the group of nodes (e.g., traverse the group of nodes from lowest level priority value to highest level priority value) to generate the contraction hierarchy. For each iteration of the traversal, the route planning platform can remove a node from the contraction hierarchy and add one or more shortcuts that represent one or more shortest routes between the remaining nodes of the contraction hierarchy.”);
Roggenkamp and Robinson are both considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because both of them are in the same field as route planning as the claimed invention. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, to have combined the element claimed by known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded predictable results. One of the ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification so that the utilization of the partition contraction hierarchy can reduce the amount of resources (e.g., processing resources, memory resources, power resources, and/or the like) used by the route plaining platform (Robinson; 0016).
The combination of Roggenkamp and Robinson does not explicitly teach that wherein the incoming links are associated with one or more turn-in links, and wherein the outgoing links are associated with one or more turn-out links;
wherein a shortcut path is generated for the one the one or more required candidate shortcut paths not associated with the witness paths and usage of the shortcut path is restricted for a particular pair of a turn-in link and a turn-out link of the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links, based on information associated with the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links, wherein the shortcut path cannot be traversed for the particular pair, based on the restriction, and
However, Delling in the same field of endeavor (Delling, at least one para. 0003; “ Methods, processes, apparatus, machine-readable tangible storage media, and data processing systems are described for best cost path routing, including minimum cost path identification, live traffic routing, and on-demand shortcut computation in a mobile navigation system.”) teaches wherein the incoming links are associated with one or more turn-in links, and wherein the outgoing links are associated with one or more turn-out links (Delling, at least one para. 0032; “In the illustrated example of FIG. 2, by way of example only, a cell 202 for which a shortcut is maintained in the global LRU cache 124 (FIG. 1) is shown having an entry point at node N1 and multiple exit points at nodes N2, N3, N4, N5, and N6. The entry and exit points reference the point at which a path intersects a cell boundary from the perspective of the direction of travel. In one embodiment, the on-demand shortcut processor 110 (FIG. 1) determines a current optimal shortcut, i.e. the minimum cost path, through the cell 202.”, wherein FIG. 2 shows the candidate shortcut paths N-N3-D and S-N3-N9-N10-D. As a result, N3 has two incoming links (S to N3) and (N3 to N9) and D has two outgoing links (N3 to D) and (N10 to D));
wherein a shortcut path is generated for the one the one or more required candidate shortcut paths not associated with the witness paths and usage of the shortcut path is restricted (Delling, at least one para. 0031 and FIG. 1 shown below; “In the illustrated example in FIG. 2, an example cell 200 or other portion of a navigable area reveals a start location S and destination location D, and a selection of eleven nodes N1 . . . N11 that could be encountered when traversing any one of a number of paths between start S and destination D. In one embodiment, each node can be processed to determine whether to identify the node as a via node.”, wherein the witness path is S-N2-N7-N8-D for each of the candidate shortcut paths N-N3-D and S-N3-N9-N10-D, wherein one or more required candidate shortcut paths not associated with witness paths is S-N6-N5-N11-D, wherein the shortcut path for S-N6-N5-N11-D being S-N4-N11-D) for a particular pair of a turn-in link and a turn-out link of the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links (Delling, at least one para. 0031 and FIG. 1 shown below; “In the illustrated example in FIG. 2, an example cell 200 or other portion of a navigable area reveals a start location S and destination location D, and a selection of eleven nodes N1 . . . N11 that could be encountered when traversing any one of a number of paths between start S and destination D.”, wherein node S has (N1 to N4) and (N1 to N6) as incoming turn-in links and node N11 has (N5 to D) and (N4 to D) as outgoing turn-out links, wherein the shortcut path cannot be traversed for particular pair being (N1 to N4) as the incoming turn-in link and (N4 to D) as the outgoing turn-out link.), based on information associated with the pairs of the incoming and the outgoing links, wherein the shortcut path cannot be traversed for the particular pair, based on the restriction (Delling, at least one para. 0034; “The live traffic routing process 300 identifies those via nodes that are likely to provide the user with best alternate routes using live-traffic input.”) and (Delling, at least one para. 0004; “In one embodiment, minimum cost path identification determines which alternative routes avoid blocked sub-paths by evaluating a local optimality of the sub-paths based on static costs. Each sub-path is a portion, or segment, of the full path or route.”), and
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The combination of Roggenkamp, Robinson, and Delling are all considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because all of them are in the same field as route planning as the claimed invention. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, to have combined the element claimed by known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded predictable results. One of the ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification so that the dynamic cost of the witness path can be calculated to identify more efficient shortcut computation (Delling; 0030).
Regarding claim 16, Roggenkamp teaches (Original) The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 15, wherein the one or more instructions further cause the device to: identify unrequired candidate shortcut paths based on determining whether each of the candidate shortcut paths is required (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0099; “In the illustrative embodiment, the navigation system 130 queries the user whether to display one or more alternative routes based on the weather indicator, as indicated in block 216. For example, if the weather indicator indicates a high chance of rain along the travel route, the user may select to display an alternative route that avoids precipitation. If the navigation system 130 receives a user input that indicates that the user does not want to display an alternative route in block 218, the method 200 skips ahead to block 230 to navigate to the destination via the original travel route. If, however, the navigation system 130 receives a user input that indicates that the user wants to display an alternative route in block 218, the method 200 advances to block 220 to display one or more alternative routes to the destination.”); and
maintain the unrequired candidate shortcut paths in the initial contraction hierarchy (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0102; “If the navigation system 130 determines that the user indicated not to select an alternative route (e.g., explicitly or implicitly by not selecting an alternative route) in block 226, the method 200 skips ahead to block 230 to start navigation to the destination via the original travel route.”).
Regarding claim 17, Roggenkamp teaches (Original) The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 15, wherein the one or more instructions further cause the device to: maintain one or more required candidate shortcut paths, associated with witness paths, in the initial contraction hierarchy (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0102; “If, however, the navigation system 130 determines that the user has selected an alternative route in block 226, the method 200 proceeds to block 228 to set the selected alternative route as a new travel route. Subsequently, in block 230, the navigation system 130 navigate to the destination via the new travel route.”).
Regarding claim 18, Robinson teaches (Original) The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 15, wherein the one or more instructions, that cause the device to examine the pairs of incoming and outgoing links, for each of the plurality of nodes of the initial contraction hierarchy, to generate the candidate shortcut paths (Robinson, at least one para. 0023 and FIG. 1D; “As shown by reference number 110, the route planning platform can generate a contraction hierarchy of the overlay network. For example, the route planning platform can identify one or more nodes and/or one or more paths of the overlay network and can generate one or more shortcuts to represent shortest paths between the one or more nodes.”), cause the device to:
examine pairs of turn-in and turn-out links to and from the candidate shortcut paths.
Robinson does not explicitly teach examine pairs of turn-in and turn-out links to and from the candidate shortcut paths.
However, Delling in the same field of endeavor (Delling, at least one para. 0003; “ Methods, processes, apparatus, machine-readable tangible storage media, and data processing systems are described for best cost path routing, including minimum cost path identification, live traffic routing, and on-demand shortcut computation in a mobile navigation system.”) teaches examine pairs of turn-in and turn-out links to and from the candidate shortcut paths (Delling, at least one para. 0032; “In the illustrated example of FIG. 2, by way of example only, a cell 202 for which a shortcut is maintained in the global LRU cache 124 (FIG. 1) is shown having an entry point at node N1 and multiple exit points at nodes N2, N3, N4, N5, and N6. The entry and exit points reference the point at which a path intersects a cell boundary from the perspective of the direction of travel. In one embodiment, the on-demand shortcut processor 110 (FIG. 1) determines a current optimal shortcut, i.e. the minimum cost path, through the cell 202.”, wherein FIG. 2 shows that N3 has two incoming links coming from N2 and N4. Similarly, N3 has two outgoing links heading towards N8 and N9).
Robinson and Delling are both considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because both of them are in the same field as route planning as the claimed invention. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, to have combined the element claimed by known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded predictable results. One of the ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification so that the dynamic cost of the witness path can be calculated to identify more efficient shortcut computation (Delling; 0030).
Regarding claim 19, Roggenkamp teaches (Original) The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 15, wherein the one or more instructions, that cause the device to determine whether each of the candidate shortcut paths is required due to the road edit, cause the device to one or more of (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0112; “the method 500 advances to block 520 to determines if one or more alternative routes to the destination are available that have an improved characteristic relative to the inclement weather. It should be appreciated that the one or more alternative routes may avoid the inclement weather entirely, have a less chance of encountering the inclement weather, or have shorter duration of expected overlap with the inclement weather.”):
determine whether each of the candidate shortcut paths has become cheaper than a former witness path;
determine whether a former witness path has become more expensive than each of the candidate shortcut paths; or
determine whether one or more links of each of the candidate shortcut paths are newly created shortcuts.
Roggenkamp does not explicitly teach determine whether each of the candidate shortcut paths has become cheaper than a former witness path;
determine whether a former witness path has become more expensive than each of the candidate shortcut paths; or
determine whether one or more links of each of the candidate shortcut paths are newly created shortcuts.
However, Delling in the same field of endeavor (Delling, at least one para. 0003; “ Methods, processes, apparatus, machine-readable tangible storage media, and data processing systems are described for best cost path routing, including minimum cost path identification, live traffic routing, and on-demand shortcut computation in a mobile navigation system.”) teaches determine whether each of the candidate shortcut paths has become cheaper than a former witness path (Delling, at least one para. 0048; “ The pre-computation is typically based on a static cost of travel from each entry into the cell to each exit from the cell. During the on-demand shortcut process 500, an on-demand shortcut can be re-computed, or computed for the first time if a pre-computed shortcut does not exist, based on dynamic costs of travel from each entry into the cell to each exit from the cell. Therefore an on-demand shortcut can differ from the pre-computed shortcut.”);
determine whether a former witness path has become more expensive than each of the candidate shortcut paths (Delling, at least one para. 0048; “ The pre-computation is typically based on a static cost of travel from each entry into the cell to each exit from the cell. During the on-demand shortcut process 500, an on-demand shortcut can be re-computed, or computed for the first time if a pre-computed shortcut does not exist, based on dynamic costs of travel from each entry into the cell to each exit from the cell. Therefore an on-demand shortcut can differ from the pre-computed shortcut.”); or
determine whether one or more links of each of the candidate shortcut paths are newly created shortcuts (Delling, at least one para. 0026; “ an on-demand shortcut processor 110 accesses a last recently used LRU cache 124 to generate new or updated shortcuts as needed for a given cell encountered during the route search 106”).
Roggenkamp and Delling are both considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because both of them are in the same field as route planning as the claimed invention. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, to have combined the element claimed by known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded predictable results. One of the ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification so that the dynamic cost of the witness path can be calculated to identify more efficient shortcut computation (Delling; 0030).
Regarding claim 20, Roggenkamp teaches (Original) The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 15, wherein the one or more instructions, that cause the device to determine whether each of the candidate shortcut paths is required due to the road edit, cause the device to: compare (Roggenkamp, at least one para. 0101; “Referring back to the example illustrated in FIG. 4, the original travel route was Minneapolis-Madison-Rockford-Chicago-Urbana with the estimated arrival time at the destination and at each of the intermediary cities, as shown in the screenshot 400. As shown in the screenshot 410, an alternative route, which is Minneapolis-Madison-Rockford-Bloomington-Urbana in this example, may be displayed to avoid precipitation with a new estimated arrival time at the destination and at each of the intermediary cities. The alternative route is also color coded to indicate a chance of precipitation at the time the vehicle will be at each location along the alternative route. Specifically, the screenshot 410 indicates that the alternative route minimizes a chance of encountering rain by travelling through Bloomington instead of Chicago.”).
Even though Roggenkamp teaches about “each of the candidate shortcut paths before and after the road edit”, Roggenkamp does not explicitly teach that a cost of each of the candidate shortcut paths before and after the road edit.
However, Delling in the same field of endeavor (Delling, at least one para. 0003; “Methods, processes, apparatus, machine-readable tangible storage media, and data processing systems are described for best cost path routing, including minimum cost path identification, live traffic routing, and on-demand shortcut computation in a mobile navigation system.”) teaches a cost (Delling, at least one para. 0003; “a navigation system on a mobile device, live traffic routing helps a user choose the best alternate route from source S to destination D as compared to their current route, including displaying one or more of the alternate routes having the best cost path, where cost can be measured in terms of any one or more of travel time, travel distance, amount of traffic and/or number of detours encountered during travel. The best cost path determination is based on current route conditions, e.g. time of travel, traffic and road closures.”).
Roggenkamp and Delling are both considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because both of them are in the same field as route planning as the claimed invention. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, to have combined the element claimed by known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded predictable results. One of the ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification so that the cost of each of the candidate shortcut paths before and after the road edit can be utilized to identify the optimal route (Delling; 0032).
Claim(s) 2 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Roggenkamp (US 20210333114 A1), Robinson (US 20200318980 A1), and Delling (US 20180051995 A1), and further in view of Lear (US 20200271463 A1).
Regarding claim 2, Robinson teaches (Original) The method of claim 1, wherein the initial contraction hierarchy (Robinson, at least one para. 0023; “As shown by reference number 110, the route planning platform can generate a contraction hierarchy of the overlay network. For example, the route planning platform can identify one or more nodes and/or one or more paths of the overlay network and can generate one or more shortcuts to represent shortest paths between the one or more nodes.”) is a conditional contraction hierarchy.
The combination of Roggenkamp, Robinson, and Delling does not explicitly teach that a conditional contraction hierarchy.
However, Lear in the same field of endeavor (Lear, at least one para. 0007; “A navigation service can provide a user device or a vehicle with a set of navigational instructions for a route that includes a set of stops for a set of deliveries. In some situations, the route can be subject to a route restriction that requires the route to pass through one or more waypoints.”) teaches a conditional contraction hierarchy (Lear, at least one para. 0097; “a certain vehicle can be required to pass through a specific waypoint of a route restriction, regardless of a result of the first check (e.g., the vehicle might be of a certain height or weight that necessitates taking a certain path).”).
The combination of Roggenkamp, Robinson, Delling, and Lear are all considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because all of them are in the same field as route planning as the claimed invention. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, to have combined the element claimed by known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded predictable results. One of the ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification in order to determine that the route is compliant with one or more route restrictions (Lear; 0093).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to UPUL P CHANDRASIRI whose telephone number is (703)756-5823. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8.30 am to 5pm.
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/U.P.C./Examiner, Art Unit 3665 /CHRISTIAN CHACE/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3665
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