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 allowance or after an Office action under Ex Parte Quayle, 25 USPQ 74, 453 O.G. 213 (Comm'r Pat. 1935). 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, prosecution in this application has been reopened pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 31 July 2026 has been entered.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 31 July 2026 was filed after the mailing date of the Notice of Allowance on 07 July 2026. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Response to Amendment
Claims 3, 5, 10, 16 and 18 have been amended. Claims 1-20 are currently pending.
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.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claim 11 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claim 11 recites the limitation "the set of differences" in lines 2-3 of the claim. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim. It is noted that claim 11 depends on claim 10, which is dependent on independent claim 1. It is also noted that “a set of differences” is recited in claim 8, which is dependent on independent claim 1.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 11 would be allowable if the 35 U.S.C. §112(b) rejection were overcome.
Claims 1-10 and 12-20 are allowed.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Claim 11 would be allowable if the 35 U.S.C. §112(b) rejection were overcome and claims 1-10 and 12-20 are allowed because while the prior art discloses creating boundary ground truth maps and boundary track maps for localization of autonomous vehicles on tracks or racetracks, the prior art does not disclose the limitations “for each digital image of a plurality of digital images in video data; generating an estimated track boundary segment based on said each digital image associated with a moving object; for each position of a plurality of positions in an actual track boundary segment pertaining to a track for one or more moving objects based on said each position, making an alignment of the estimated track boundary segment with the actual track boundary segment, based on the alignment, generating a difference measurement between the estimated track boundary segment and a portion of the actual track boundary segment” as recited in the independent claims.
The closest prior art being Kabzan, Juraj, et al. "AMZ Driverless: The Full Autonomous Racing System." arXiv preprint arXiv:1905.05150 (2019), discloses algorithms and system architecture for an autonomous racecar. In order to autonomously race around a previously unknown track, the proposed solution combines techniques from different fields of robotics including perception, estimation and control. The perception system uses either LiDAR, vision or both. The motion estimation subsystem fuses measurements from five different sensors. For localization and mapping, a particle filter-based SLAM system is used which facilitates the detection and association of landmarks. A custom path planning algorithm is generated which takes the most likely track boundaries into account given a map and/or on-board perception. A control framework is developed that directly minimizes lap time while obeying the vehicle's traction limits and track boundary constraints.
Sauerbeck, Florian, et al. "A combined LiDAR-camera localization for autonomous race cars." SAE (2021), discloses a multi-sensor localization approach developed for use in the Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC). To decouple lateral and longitudinal position of the ego vehicle, a track bound coordinate system is used that can be transformed to conventional Cartesian coordinates. The longitudinal motion of the car is tracked via a modified version of the OpenVSLAM that outputs the progress of the already driven distance. The SAFER barrier which encloses the whole oval is detected by a 3D-LiDAR and the transformation of the barrier to the ego vehicle is estimated.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to TRACY MANGIALASCHI whose telephone number is (571)270-5189. The examiner can normally be reached M-F, 9:30AM TO 6:00PM.
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/TRACY MANGIALASCHI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2668
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