DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (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.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
Claim 2 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
Claim 2 recites “the cab is located forward away from the entrance”. This limitation is indefinite because it is unclear what is meant by “forward away”. For purposes of examination, it will be assumed that Applicant intended for the limitation to be “the cab is located in front of the entrance”. Correction and/or clarification is required.
Claim Interpretation
The claims recite “a door opening determiner”, “a pre-docking door width calculator”, “a door width determiner”, “a pre-moving door width calculator”, “an image determiner”, and “a door width identifier” as if they are distinct structural elements. However, as disclosed in Applicant’s specification, a controller is responsible for the determining, calculating, and identifying (controller makes the determination…; controller calculates…; etc.; [0041], [0076]). Therefore, Examiner notes that these are not required to be distinct structural elements.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1 and 7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tan et al., US 2018/0354650 A1 in view of Hutton, US 2003/0145405 A1.
Regarding claim 1, Tan teaches a passenger boarding bridge (movable Passenger Boarding Bridge (PBB)) that is known in the art and improves on it comprising:
a rotunda ([0004]; shown in the right side connected to terminal building 102 in Figure 1) connected to a terminal building;
a tunnel unit (101; Figure 1) whose proximal end is connected to the rotunda in such a manner that the tunnel unit is liftable and lowerable ([0004]; telescopic legs unnumbered but clearly shown in Figure 1), the tunnel unit being configured to be extendable and retractable ([0004]) in a longitudinal direction of the tunnel unit;
a cab (left portion beyond legs in Figure 1) provided at a distal end of the tunnel unit;
a mover that moves the cab to dock the cab with an entrance of an aircraft (“The cabin, at the distal end of the loading bridge, may be raised or lowered, extended or retracted, and may pivot to accommodate aircraft of different sizes. These motions are controlled by an operator's station in the cab.” [0004]); and
a door position detector (“laser line profilers to detect the vertical and lower edges of an aircraft door” [0059]) that is provided inside the cab and that detects, after the cab is docked with the entrance by the mover, a position of an edge portion of a door of the entrance in a width direction (the vertical edges of a door are in a width direction) of the door with respect to the cab;
Tan discusses “automatically aligning and connecting a passenger boarding bridge (PBB) with the passenger door of an aircraft” (Abstract) and “allow the door to properly open and close” (lines 5-6 of paragraph [0059]) but fails to explicitly disclose the limitations of a door opening determiner that determines whether or not the door of the entrance can be opened smoothly based on whether or not the position of the edge portion of the door in the width direction of the door, the position being detected by the door position detector. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Tan’s bridge to include a door opening determiner that determines whether or not the door of the entrance can be opened smoothly based on whether or not the position of the edge portion of the door in the width direction of the door, the position being detected by the door position detector in view of Tan’s disclosure of detecting the vertical edges of an aircraft door and the discussion of allowing the door to properly open and close. While the resulting combination fails to disclose that the position of the edge portion of the door is present within a predetermined allowable region, Hutton teaches automatically positioning a passenger bridge and discloses that it is known in the art to have a database with information on the positions of the doors for the type of aircraft and the ability to determine an expected position of the door with which the bridge is to be aligned based on the type of aircraft ([0010]). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the resulting combination to determine whether the position of the edge portion of the door is within a predetermined allowable region since Hutton discloses it is known in the art to know an expected position of the door with which the bridge is to be aligned based on the type of aircraft ([0010]), the expected position being a predetermined allowable region.
While the resulting combination fails to disclose a notifier that notifies that there is an abnormality in a case where the door opening determiner has determined that the door of the entrance cannot be opened smoothly, Tan further discloses that if the sensors do not make a detection as they are expected to, the system can trigger an alert to the ground operator ([0072]). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to extend Tan’s teaching of triggering an alert to modify the resulting combination to include a notifier that notifies (by triggering an alert) that there is an abnormality in a case where the door opening determiner has determined that the door of the entrance cannot be opened smoothly in view of Tan disclosing the desire for allowing the door to properly open and close and it would be an abnormality if the door cannot open or close properly.
While the resulting combination fails to explicitly disclose “in a case where a width of the door is greater than or equal to a predetermined width”, this appears to be a matter of intended use. Further, the resulting combination would be able to be used in a case where a width of the door is greater than or equal to a predetermined width since the resulting combination is able to determine the width of a door with no exclusions disclosed and there is no evidence otherwise.
Regarding claim 7, the resulting combination includes the door position detector being a laser displacement sensor that detects a groove between a fuselage and the edge portion of the door in a width direction of the door (“lasers to detect the gap between the aircraft fuselage and the aircraft door”; Tan’s [0015]).
Claims 2-4 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tan in view of Hutton as applied to claim 1, further in view of Sonada, US 10,875,666 B2.
Regarding claim 2, the resulting combination includes the mover being configured to move the cab by automatic control (Tan’s Abstract; the “distal end of the PBB” being the cab) but fails to explicitly disclose the moving clauses as claimed, Sonada is an evidentiary reference that discloses that it is known in the art to have “a control device configured to control the drive wheels and the rotational mechanism to move the cab from a standby position and stop the cab at a predetermined target position in such an orientation that the cab faces the entrance of an aircraft” and “an actual docking position of the cab when the cab is docked with the entrance of the aircraft” (Background Art, column 1 lines 23-29). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the resulting combination to include moving the cab from a predetermined standby position, from which the cab is to start moving, to a temporary stop position, at which the cab is located in front of the entrance by a predetermined distance and then moving the cab to a position at which the cab gets docked with the entrance as disclosed by Sonoda that it is known in the art to have the mover perform those operations.
The resulting combination includes a camera mounted to the cab that captures an image of the entrance of the aircraft (Tan’s [0067] discloses video cameras mounted in the cabin of the passenger boarding bridge for detection of aircraft passenger door position). Sonoda further discloses an entrance position calculator that is configured to detect the entrance of the aircraft and calculate the horizontal positional information (which is width) based on a boundary point (Sonoda’s column 4 lines 24-31). In view of Tan disclosing determining the position of an aircraft door by detecting its vertical and lower edges ([0001]) and Sonoda’s disclosure as detailed herein, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to include a pre-docking door width calculator that detects, a first characteristic portion (left vertical edge of door) and a second characteristic portion (right vertical edge of door) based on the image of the entrance captured by the camera, the first and second characteristic portions being present around the door of the entrance and being away from each other (opposite left and right sides of the door) in the width direction of the door, and calculates the width of the door based on positions of the respective first and second characteristic portions of the door to be able to fully determine the position of the door and be able to compare the door as viewed by the camera with the expected door (as modified by Hutton in the rejection to claim 1) in view of Tan and Sonoda’s disclosures as discussed herein.
Sonoda further discloses that it is known in the art to move a bridge to be positioned in front of a predicted position of an aircraft door in accordance with information given to a control device in advance, and based on video image from a video camera, a relative positional relationship between the aircraft door and bridge is measured, and based on the obtained information, the movement of the bridge is controlled until the bridge comes in contact with the aircraft door (Sonoda’s column 1 lines 43-54 of Background Art). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have the pre-docking door width calculator detect the door characteristics when the cab is at the temporary stop position in view of Sonoda’s further disclosure as detailed above since it is an iterative process of getting the most accurate door position and moving the bridge to align the bridge with the door. The resulting combination makes obvious that a door width determiner would determine whether or not the width of the door calculated by the pre-docking door width calculator is greater than or equal to the predetermined width since it is an iterative process that would keep calculating until the width of the door matched the predetermined width of the door when the bridge completely aligns with the door. The resulting combination includes the door position detector being configured to detect the position of the edge portion of the door in a width direction of the door with respect to the cab (since the camera is on the cab). The limitation of “in a case where the …” appears to be a matter of intended use. Additionally, the resulting combination would be able to detect the position of the edge portion of the door in a case where the door width determiner has determined that the width of the door calculated by the pre-docking door width calculator is greater than or equal to the predetermined width since it appears it can perform the detection in any case.
Regarding claim 3, the resulting combination from claim 2 makes obvious a pre-moving door width calculator (the controller making another calculation) that detects, when the cab is at the standby position, the first and second characteristic portions based on the image of the entrance captured by the camera, and calculates the width of the door based on the positions of the respective first and second characteristic portions on the image since it is performing the step from claim 2 just a little bit later in time, and it is obvious to perform the step again for better data while the cab is still.
The Examiner takes Official Notice that stopping an operation is old and well-known if there is a problem. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have the passenger boarding bridge be configured to terminate the automatic control of the operation of the mover in a case where a discrepancy between the width of the door calculated by the pre-moving door width calculator and the width of the door calculated by the pre-docking door width calculator is out of a predetermined allowable range since those widths should be substantially similar and being out of predetermined allowable range would indicate that there might be a problem with the camera.
Regarding claim 4, since Tan discloses that the door position detector detects the vertical and lower edges of an aircraft door ([0059]), it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the resulting combination from claim 2 to use the left edge of the door as the first characteristic portion, the lower edge of the door as the second characteristic portion, and the right edge of the door as another characteristic portion based on design choice to be able to compare to a predetermined door (the resulting combination as modified by Hutton). The resulting combination yields the first and second characteristic portions being in a predetermined positional relationship (edges of an aircraft door) in which their positions are different from each other in both a left-right relationship and a vertical direction of the door.
Since the resulting combination includes comparing the image of the door to a predetermined door (the resulting combination as modified by Hutton), the resulting combination makes obvious that the passenger boarding bridge further comprises an image determiner (something in the controller must make that determination, otherwise there would be no reason to make a comparison) that determines whether or not a positional relationship between the first and second characteristic portions on the image is the predetermined positional relationship to ensure that the image is of a door; otherwise it could be an indication that the camera is picking up lines or elements that belong to something irrelevant, not a door.
In view of Tan disclosing that the controller can stop the system from moving upon sensing a potentially dangerous condition ([0084]), it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have the passenger boarding bridge be configured to terminate the automatic control of the operations of the mover in a case where the image determiner has determined that the positional relationship between the first and second characteristic portions is not the predetermined positional relationship since it could be an indication that the camera cannot be relied on.
Claim 5 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tan in view of Hutton and Sonoda as applied to claim 2, further in view of FR 2573724 A1 (hereinafter will be referred to as “FR ‘724”).
Regarding claim 5, the resulting combination includes a bellows-shaped closure (Tan’s [0004] discloses “accordion-like”, which is “bellows-shaped”) that is provided at a distal end of the cab and that is extendable and contractible in a front-back direction (Tan’s [0004]).
While the resulting combination fails to disclose a level-detector that is mounted to the cab, FR ‘724 teaches a boarding gangway which is a passenger boarding bridge and discloses that it is known in the art to have a level sensor with a roller (“a sensor with physical contact, carried by the end of the gangway, is applied against the cabin of the aircraft…a roller sensor”; roughly middle to bottom of page 2 of the English translation) that is mounted to the cab (because that is the end that contacts the aircraft). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the resulting combination to include a level-detector that is mounted to the cab and that comes into contact with the aircraft and detects an upward/downward movement of the aircraft with respect to the cab in view of FR ‘724’s disclosure as discussed herein to be able to detect any movement of the aircraft (roughly middle to bottom of page 2 of the English translation) to better help the bridge align with the aircraft door.
In view of Tan disclosing that passenger board bridge docking system is automatic (title and “fully automated” [0010]), it is an obvious modification to have the passenger boarding bridge be configured to perform automatic operations of the closure [the bellow-shaped/accordion-like closure at the end of the bridge that docks with an aircraft] and the level-detector, following automatic control of the operation of the mover (“fully automated” Tan’s [0010]).
In view of Tan disclosing that the controller can stop the system from moving upon sensing a potentially dangerous condition ([0084]), it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have the passenger boarding bridge be configured to terminate the automatic control of the operations of the closure and the level detector in a case where the door opening determiner has determined that the door of the entrance cannot be opened smoothly the door not being able to open is potentially a dangerous condition.
Claim 6 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tan in view of Hutton as applied to claim 1, further in view of Sonoda, US 10,875,666 B2 and FR ‘724.
Regarding claim 6, Tan further discloses that in a situation where the sensors cannot detect the gap around the aircraft door, the system can trigger an alert and at which point the ground operator can take control of the passenger boarding bridge manually ([0072]). The resulting combination makes obvious that the mover is configured to perform, by manual control, an operation of moving the cab to which he cab gets docked with the entrance so that the ground operator needs to move the mover manually if the sensors were not able to detect the gap at the door. The resulting combination includes a bellows-shaped closure (Tan’s [0004] discloses “accordion-like”, which is “bellows-shaped”) that is provided at a distal end of the cab and that is extendable contractible in a front-back direction (Tan’s [0004]).
While the resulting combination fails to disclose a level-detector that is mounted to the cab, FR ‘724 teaches a boarding gangway which is a passenger boarding bridge and discloses that it is known in the art to have a level sensor with a roller (“a sensor with physical contact, carried by the end of the gangway, is applied against the cabin of the aircraft…a roller sensor”; roughly middle to bottom of page 2 of the English translation) that is mounted to the cab (because that is the end that contacts the aircraft). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the resulting combination to include a level-detector that is mounted to the cab and that comes into contact with the aircraft and detects an upward/downward movement of the aircraft with respect to the cab in view of FR ‘724’s disclosure as discussed herein to be able to detect any movement of the aircraft (roughly middle to bottom of page 2 of the English translation) to better help the bridge align with the aircraft door.
From the resulting combination from claim 1, since Hutton teaches automatically positioning a passenger bridge and discloses that it is known in the art to have a database with information on the positions of the doors for the type of aircraft and the ability to determine an expected position of the door with which the bridge is to be aligned based on the type of aircraft ([0010]), it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to include a door width identifier that receives an input of aircraft type information about the aircraft with which the cab is to be docked since a door width identifier that receives input would be required in order use the database “to determine an expected position of the door” (Hutton’s ([0010]) from the resulting combination from claim 1. The resulting combination would be able to identify whether or not the width of the door of the aircraft is greater than or equal to the predetermined width since Hutton’s disclosure compares the door to a predetermined door. The limitations of “in a case where…is greater than or equal to the predetermined width” appear to be a matter of intended use. Additionally, the resulting combination would be able to perform such with any size door, and if the sensors were not able to sense the gap of the door for any reason, including the door being too wide, the resulting combination above made it obvious that the bridge operator could take control manually.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. See attached Notice of References Cited sheet. FR 2573724 A1 is applied above in the rejection, and also teaches the passenger boarding bridge can be automatically raised or lowered by a controller, detecting by repetitive testing for all parameters necessary for automatic function, and sending an alert in the event of an anomaly. Truscott, US 10,908,580 B2 is cited for teaching a passenger boarding bridge that can automatically align with a door by processing information of an aircraft that is encoded in a decal on an aircraft to be able to know the door size, position, other characteristics.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to KATHERINE J CHU whose telephone number is 571-272-7819. The examiner can normally be reached M-F generally 9:30-5:30.
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/KATHERINE J CHU/ Examiner, Art Unit 3671
/CHRISTOPHER J SEBESTA/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3671