DETAILED ACTION
Claims 1-14 are pending.
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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1-6 and 11-14 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Jo, Guejong, Su-Hwan Jang, and Jongpil Jeong. "Design and implementation of cpps and edge computing architecture based on opc ua server." Procedia Computer Science 155 (2019): 97-104 (hereinafter Jo).
Regarding claim 1-6 and 11-14, Jo discloses all the claimed limitations, as outlined below.
Claim 1 and corresponding claim 14. An edge computing device for processing plant process data acquired with respect to a production process of an industrial plant comprising a plant control system, wherein the plant control system comprises an interface server (Fig 1-2 and Fig 7 - - CPPS server and OPC US Pub/Sub Broker Server. See Fig 7 provided below),
PNG
media_image1.png
382
604
media_image1.png
Greyscale
wherein the edge computing device comprises: an interface computing unit configured to be communicatively coupled to the interface server for receiving the plant process data from the plant control system (Fig 1 - - receiving data from the Shop Field Layer. See Fig 1 provide below),
PNG
media_image2.png
392
662
media_image2.png
Greyscale
and a container computing unit configured to provide a container runtime environment configured to run a container on the container computing unit, a process container configured to run on the container runtime environment, wherein the process container comprises a processing program configured to process plant process data acquired with respect to a production process of the industrial plant when running inside the process container, wherein the interface computing unit is communicatively coupled to the container computing unit for (Fig 4 – Container runtime environment providing local control related services. See Fig 4 -provided below),
PNG
media_image3.png
316
658
media_image3.png
Greyscale
providing the received plant process data to the container runtime environment, wherein the processing program is configured to process the provided plant process data (Fig 4 – The container runtime environment is provided with the local control related services data. Further, said data is processed).
2. The edge computing device according to claim 1, wherein the interface computing unit is communicatively coupled via a protocol converter to the interface server, wherein the protocol converter is configured to isolate and tunnel the plant process data and to convert the plant process data from a data format utilized at the interface server to a data format utilized by the interface computing unit (Page 101 – Data is pre-process before provided to the container. In order to provide for communication/utilization of legacy devices/protocols of existing machines and equipment, pre-processing and adaptation of data is performed. Due to the flexible Docker technology, it is able to communicate with existing equipment and machines by various industrial internet protocol. Further, it can be noted that abstraction is being performed by the Docker technology. Docker Containers (and containerization in general) operate at a higher level, abstracting the OS user space rather than the hardware. Containers share the host machine's OS kernel with other containers but run as isolated processes in user space. This design makes them extremely lightweight, efficient, and portable, as they only package the application code and its dependencies (libraries, runtime, configuration files)).
3. The edge computing device according to claim 1, wherein the protocol converter is configured to convert plant process data provided in a legacy data format at the interface server to a modern data format (Page 103 - - In Edge Computing, the Contender Docker technology is applied to convert the Modbus industry protocol to OPC UA).
4. The edge computing device according to claim 2, wherein the protocol converter comprises an open Platform Communications Data Access-to-Unified Access (OPC DA-to-UA) converter that is configured to convert the plant process data provided in an Open Platform Communications Data Access (OPC DA) data format at the interface server by applying to the plant process data an Open Platform Communication Unified Access (OPC UA) wrapper (Page 103 - - In Edge Computing, the Contender Docker technology is applied to convert the Modbus industry protocol to OPC UA).
5. The edge computing device according to claim 1, wherein the processing program is configured to provide plant control data for controlling or optimizing the industrial plant based on the processing of the plant process data, wherein the container computing unit is communicatively coupled to the interface computing unit for providing the plant control data to the interface computing unit, wherein the interface computing unit is communicatively coupled with the interface server for providing the plant control data to the interface server for implementation on the plant control system of the industrial plant (Page 101 – Data is pre-process before provided to the container. In order to provide for communication/utilization of legacy devices/protocols of existing machines and equipment, pre-processing and adaptation of data is performed. Due to the flexible Docker technology, it is able to communicate with existing equipment and machines by various industrial internet protocol. Further, it can be noted that abstraction is being performed by the Docker technology. Docker Containers (and containerization in general) operate at a higher level, abstracting the OS user space rather than the hardware. Containers share the host machine's OS kernel with other containers but run as isolated processes in user space. This design makes them extremely lightweight, efficient, and portable, as they only package the application code and its dependencies (libraries, runtime, configuration files)).
6. The edge computing device according to claim 5, wherein the interface computing unit is communicatively coupled via a protocol converter to the interface server, wherein the protocol converter is configured to isolate and tunnel the plant control data and to convert the plant control data from a data format utilized at the interface computing unit to a data format utilized by the interface server (Page 101 – Data is pre-process before provided to the container. In order to provide for communication/utilization of legacy devices/protocols of existing machines and equipment, pre-processing and adaptation of data is performed. Due to the flexible Docker technology, it is able to communicate with existing equipment and machines by various industrial internet protocol. Further, it can be noted that abstraction is being performed by the Docker technology. Docker Containers (and containerization in general) operate at a higher level, abstracting the OS user space rather than the hardware. Containers share the host machine's OS kernel with other containers but run as isolated processes in user space. This design makes them extremely lightweight, efficient, and portable, as they only package the application code and its dependencies (libraries, runtime, configuration files)).
11. The edge computing device according to claim 1, wherein the container runtime environment is configured to allow a deployment of the processing program running within the process container via a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) workflow (Fig 4 - - see for example the “edge runtime features” and the associated container data communication scheme).
12. A computing framework for processing plant process data acquired with respect to a production process of an industrial plant comprising a plant control system, wherein the computing framework comprises: an edge computing device according to claim 1, and an interface server being part of the plant control system, wherein the interface server is communicatively coupled to the interface computing unit to provide plant process data from the plant control system to the interface computing unit of the edge computing device and vice versa (Fig 4 – The Edge Device/Software/Architecture are linked/interfaced to the Plant/Shop, in part, based on container technology).
13. A method for processing plant process data acquired with respect to a production process of an industrial plant comprising a plant control system, wherein the plant control system comprises an interface server (Fig 1-2 and Fig 7 - - CPPS server and OPC US Pub/Sub Broker Server. See Fig 7 provided below),
PNG
media_image1.png
382
604
media_image1.png
Greyscale
wherein the method comprises: receiving plant process data from the plant control system via the interface server (Fig 1 - - receiving data from the Shop Field Layer. See Fig 1 provide below),
PNG
media_image2.png
392
662
media_image2.png
Greyscale
providing a container runtime environment configured to run a container, wherein the container comprises a processing program configured to process the plant process data of an industrial plant, when running inside the container (Fig 4 – Container runtime environment providing local control related services. See Fig 4 -provided below),
PNG
media_image3.png
316
658
media_image3.png
Greyscale
and providing the received plant process data to the container runtime environment, and processing the provided plant process data by the processing program (Fig 4 – The container runtime environment is provided with the local control related services data. Further, said data is processed).
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 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.
Claims 7-8 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Jo, Guejong, Su-Hwan Jang, and Jongpil Jeong. "Design and implementation of cpps and edge computing architecture based on opc ua server." Procedia Computer Science 155 (2019): 97-104 (hereinafter Jo) in view of Hannelius, Tom, Mikko Salmenpera, and Seppo Kuikka. "Roadmap to adopting OPC UA." 2008 6th IEEE International Conference on Industrial Informatics. IEEE, 2008 (hereinafter Hannelius).
Regarding claims 7-8, Jo discloses all the limitations of the base claims as outlined above.
Jo fails to clearly specify:
Claim 7. The edge computing device according to claim 6, wherein the protocol converter is configured to convert the plant control data provided in a modern data format into a legacy data format to provide the plant control data to the plant control system.
Claim 8. The edge computing device according to claim 7, wherein the protocol converter comprises an OPC DA-to-UA converter, wherein the OPC DA-to-UA converter is configured to convert OPC UA formatted plant control data into an OPC DA format to provide the plant control data to the plant control system.
However, Hannelius teaches:
Claim 7. wherein a protocol converter is configured to convert a plant control data provided in a modern data format into a legacy data format to provide the plant control data to the plant control system (Fig 2 and Fig 6).
Claim 8. wherein a protocol converter comprises an OPC DA-to-UA converter, wherein the OPC DA-to-UA converter is configured to convert OPC UA formatted plant control data into an OPC DA format to provide the plant control data to the plant control system (Fig 2 and Fig 6).
The applied prior art is considered analogous art to the claimed invention because they relate to same field of endeavor. They relate to system utilizing OPC UA architectures.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify the above edge computing architecture, as taught by Jo, and incorporating the concept of converting OPC UA to OPC DA, as taught by Hannelius.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do this modification in order to provide a simple protocol conversion scheme, as suggested by Hannelius (Page 760 – see Section VI. Conclusions and Future Work).
Claims 9-10 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Jo, Guejong, Su-Hwan Jang, and Jongpil Jeong. "Design and implementation of cpps and edge computing architecture based on opc ua server." Procedia Computer Science 155 (2019): 97-104 (hereinafter Jo) in view of De Alfonso, Carlos, Amanda Calatrava, and Germán Moltó. "Container-based virtual elastic clusters." Journal of Systems and Software 127 (2017): 1-11 (hereinafter De Alfonso).
Regarding claims 9-10, Jo discloses all the limitations of the base claims as outlined above.
Claim 9 - Jo further teaches the edge computing device further comprises an container configured to run on the container runtime environment, wherein the container comprises a program that is configured to pre-process the plant process data before the plant process data is provided to the process container (Page 101 – Data is pre-process before provided to the container. In order to provide for communication/utilization of legacy devices/protocols of existing machines and equipment, pre-processing and adaptation of data is performed. Due to the flexible Docker technology, it is able to communicate with existing equipment and machines by various industrial internet protocol).
Jo fails to clearly specify:
Claim 9 - that the container is an abstraction container
Claim 10 - wherein the interface computing unit and/or the container computing unit is configured to run a virtual Windows environment and/or a virtual Linux environment.
However De Alfonso, teaches:
Claim 9 - that the container is an abstraction container (Page 2 Column 1 - - It can be noted that abstraction is being performed by the Docker technology. Docker Containers (and containerization in general) operate at a higher level, abstracting the OS user space rather than the hardware. Containers share the host machine's OS kernel with other containers but run as isolated processes in user space. This design makes them extremely lightweight, efficient, and portable, as they only package the application code and its dependencies (libraries, runtime, configuration files)).
Claim 10. The edge computing device according to claim 1, wherein the interface computing unit and/or the container computing unit is configured to run a virtual Windows environment and/or a virtual Linux environment (Page 2 Column 1 - - Docker technology is associated with virtual environments).
The applied prior art is considered analogous art to the claimed invention because they relate to same field of endeavor. They relate to Docker technology.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify the above edge computing architecture, as taught by Jo, and incorporating specific concepts of virtual environments container abstraction, as taught by De Alfonso.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do this modification in order to increase performance with respect to virtualization techniques, as suggested by De Alfonso (Page 2 Column 1).
Citation of Pertinent Prior Art
The following prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
US Patent Application Patent Publication No. 2016/0127514 – relates to protocol adapter.
US Patent Application Patent Application Publication No. 2020/0112487 – relates to mechanisms for a containerized application.
Scheepers, Mathijs Jeroen. "Virtualization and containerization of application infrastructure: A comparison." 21st twente student conference on IT. Vol. 21. 2014 – relates to containerization.
Felter, Wes, et al. "An updated performance comparison of virtual machines and linux containers." 2015 IEEE international symposium on performance analysis of systems and software (ISPASS). IEEE, 2015 – relates to Linux containers.
Korodi, Adrian, Mihaita-Alin Radu, and Ruben Crisan. "Non-invasive control solution inside higher-level OPC UA based wrapper for optimizing groups of wastewater systems." 2018 IEEE 23rd International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA). Vol. 1. IEEE, 2018 – relates to OPC UA wrappers.
Pallasch, Christoph, et al. "Edge powered industrial control: Concept for combining cloud and automation technologies." 2018 IEEE International Conference on Edge Computing (EDGE). IEEE, 2018n – relates to edge and cloud computing.
Chen, Baotong, et al. "Edge computing in IoT-based manufacturing." IEEE Communications Magazine 56.9 (2018): 103-109 – relates to IOT manufacturing.
Zhang, Xiaohui, et al. "A novel multi-agent-based collaborative virtual manufacturing environment integrated with edge computing technique." Energies 12.14 (2019): 2815 – relates to virtual manufacturing.
Jensen, David. "Beginning Azure IoT Edge Computing." Apress, 2019, 265 p (2019) – relates to edge computing.
Beňo, L., R. Pribiš, and R. Leskovský. "Processing data from OPC UA server by using Edge and Cloud computing." IFAC-PapersOnLine 52.27 (2019): 240-245 – relates to OPC UA server.
Wiener, Patrick, Philipp Zehnder, and Dominik Riemer. "Managing geo-distributed stream processing pipelines for the IIoT with StreamPipes edge extensions." Proceedings of the 14th ACM International Conference on Distributed and Event-based Systems. 2020 – relates to IIOT.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to CARLOS R ORTIZ RODRIGUEZ whose telephone number is (571)272-3766. The examiner can normally be reached on Mon-Fri 10:00 am- 6:30 pm.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Mohammad Ali can be reached on 571-272-4105. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of an application may be obtained from the Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system. Status information for published applications may be obtained from either Private PAIR or Public PAIR. Status information for unpublished applications is available through Private PAIR only. For more information about the PAIR system, see http://pair-direct.uspto.gov. Should you have questions on access to the Private PAIR system, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative or access to the automated information system, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/CARLOS R ORTIZ RODRIGUEZ/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2119