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 .
Claim Interpretation
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(f):
(f) Element in Claim for a Combination. – An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
The following is a quotation of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph:
An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
The claims in this application are given their broadest reasonable interpretation using the plain meaning of the claim language in light of the specification as it would be understood by one of ordinary skill in the art. The broadest reasonable interpretation of a claim element (also commonly referred to as a claim limitation) is limited by the description in the specification when 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, is invoked.
As explained in MPEP § 2181, subsection I, claim limitations that meet the following three-prong test will be interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph:
(A) the claim limitation uses the term “means” or “step” or a term used as a substitute for “means” that is a generic placeholder (also called a nonce term or a non-structural term having no specific structural meaning) for performing the claimed function;
(B) the term “means” or “step” or the generic placeholder is modified by functional language, typically, but not always linked by the transition word “for” (e.g., “means for”) or another linking word or phrase, such as “configured to” or “so that”; and
(C) the term “means” or “step” or the generic placeholder is not modified by sufficient structure, material, or acts for performing the claimed function.
Use of the word “means” (or “step”) in a claim with functional language creates a rebuttable presumption that the claim limitation is to be treated in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph. The presumption that the claim limitation is interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, is rebutted when the claim limitation recites sufficient structure, material, or acts to entirely perform the recited function.
Absence of the word “means” (or “step”) in a claim creates a rebuttable presumption that the claim limitation is not to be treated in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph. The presumption that the claim limitation is not interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, is rebutted when the claim limitation recites function without reciting sufficient structure, material or acts to entirely perform the recited function.
Claim limitations in this application that use the word “means” (or “step”) are being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, except as otherwise indicated in an Office action. Conversely, claim limitations in this application that do not use the word “means” (or “step”) are not being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, except as otherwise indicated in an Office action.
This application includes one or more claim limitations that do not use the word “means,” but are nonetheless being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, because the claim limitation(s) uses a generic placeholder that is coupled with functional language without reciting sufficient structure to perform the recited function and the generic placeholder is not preceded by a structural modifier. Such claim limitation(s) is/are: “an event spatial temporal tensor module” in claim 2.
Because this/these claim limitation(s) is/are being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, it/they is/are being interpreted to cover the corresponding structure described in the specification as performing the claimed function, and equivalents thereof.
If applicant does not intend to have this/these limitation(s) interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, applicant may: (1) amend the claim limitation(s) to avoid it/them being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph (e.g., by reciting sufficient structure to perform the claimed function); or (2) present a sufficient showing that the claim limitation(s) recite(s) sufficient structure to perform the claimed function so as to avoid it/them being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph.
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.
Claim(s) 1-2, 5-6, 8-9, and 12-13, is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wang (US PGPUB 2023/0136306 A1) and further in view of Vora (US PGPUB 2022/0383640 A1).
As per claim 1, Wang discloses a device for predicting a collision area of a high speed small object (Wang, Fig. 1:100, and paragraph 38, discloses FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating a system for catching a fast-moving object), comprising:
an event camera (Wang, paragraph 38, discloses an event camera 160); and
a processor (Wang, Fig. 1:110:120, and paragraph 39), coupled to the event camera (Wang, Fig. 1:130:120), wherein the processor obtains a sparse event stream data through the event camera (Wang, paragraph 66, discloses at 401, the method 400 includes receiving event information from an event camera);
the processor obtains an event stream data corresponding to a cumulative time interval by using the sparse event stream data (Wang, paragraph 67, discloses At 402, the method 400 includes generating a BEHI based on the event information. For example, the device 110 may generate a BEHI among the plurality of BEHIs 304 based on event information in the event stream 302. The device 110 may obtain a list of events from the plurality of events detected by the event camera 160, and generate a BEHI for an event based on the horizontal position, vertical position, and timestamp associated with each event in the list of events);
the processor predicts a collision area category by using a temporal spatial feature expression associated with the event stream data, wherein the collision area category corresponds to the high speed small object (Wang, paragraph 70, discloses At 404, the method 400 includes obtaining prediction information as an output of the event-based neural network. For example, in response to inputting the plurality of BEHIs 304, the device 110 may obtain, as an output of the lightweight prediction network 306, prediction information 308. The prediction information 308 may include a first predicted location of the fast-moving object, a normal distribution indicating prediction uncertainty of the predicted location, and a predicted TTC); and
Although Wang, discloses the processor outputs the collision (Wang, paragraph 72, the device 110 may provide the estimated target position to the motion controller 170).
However, Wang does not explicitly disclose processor outputs the collision area category.
Vora discloses processor outputs the collision area category (Vora, paragraph 152, discloses in examples, 40,000 frames are annotated in total, including 10 object classes such as cars, motorcycles and pedestrians. Other stuff classes include vegetation and drivable regions. For ease of description, 10 object classes are considered for object detection and 16 classes in total are considered for semantic segmentation and panoptic segmentation, including object classes and stuff classes).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Wang teachings by generating output information, as taught by Vora.
The motivation would be to provide a system with improved object detection and object segmentation (Vora, paragraph 149), as taught by Vora.
As per claim 2, Wang in view of Vora further discloses the device according to claim 1, further comprising a storage medium coupled to the processor, wherein the storage medium stores an event spatial temporal tensor module (Wang, paragraph 54, discloses The device 110 may receive the event stream 302 and store the event information in the event stream 302 as a list of events {e.sub.1, e.sub.2, . . . , e.sub.N} (e.g., in memory 130 and/or storage component 140)), and the processor accesses and executes the event spatial temporal tensor module, wherein the event spatial temporal tensor module encodes the event stream data into the temporal spatial feature expression (Wang, paragraph 67, discloses The device 110 may obtain a list of events from the plurality of events detected by the event camera 160, and generate a BEHI for an event based on the horizontal position, vertical position, and timestamp associated with each event in the list of events).
As per claim 5, Wang in view of Vora further discloses the device according to claim 1, further comprising a storage medium coupled to the processor, wherein the storage medium stores a data optimization model (Vora, paragraph 91, discloses perception system 402 trains CNN 420 to generate the prediction. In some examples, perception system 402 trains CNN 420 to generate the prediction based on perception system 402 providing training data associated with the prediction to CNN 420), and the processor accesses and executes the data optimization model, wherein the data optimization model predicts the collision area category by decoding the temporal spatial feature expression (Vora, paragraph 151, discloses a panoptic quality refers to the accurate identification of objects and stuff in the environment. In some embodiments, stuff refers to objects, items, or things in the environment that are continuous and are not distinct objects. In examples, stuff refers to classes such as drivable surface, sidewalks, and the like).
As per claim 6, Wang in view of Vora further discloses the device according to claim 5, wherein the processor performs a training operation to train the data optimization model, wherein the training operation is associated with at least one of a curvature algorithm and a pixel number threshold (Vora, paragraph 155, discloses The network 1000 as described herein is a simultaneous detection and segmentation network. In examples, the network 100 includes a pillar feature module 1010 to encode point clouds features to pillar features, a 2D backbone 1012 to extract extra deep features, a classification head 1016 and bounding box regression head 1018 for 3D object detection, a semantic segmentation head 1014 for pixel-based semantic segmentation).
As per claim 8, please see the analysis of claim 1.
As per claim 9, please see the analysis of claim 2.
As per claim 12, please see the analysis of claim 5.
As per claim 13, please see the analysis of claim 6.
Claim(s) 7, and 14 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wang (US PGPUB 2023/0136306 A1) and further in view of Vora (US PGPUB 2022/0383640 A1) and further in view of Lee (US PGPUB 2018/0262708 A1).
As per claim 7, Wang in view of Vora further discloses the device according to claim 1, wherein a speed of the high speed small object is greater than 30 m/s (Wang, paragraph 3, discloses fast balls flying toward them at a speed of 40 m/s).
Wang in view of Vora does not explicitly discloses a size of the high speed small object is less than 2 cm.
Lee discloses a size of the high speed small object is less than 2 cm (Lee, paragraph 580, discloses the size of the object is smaller than 1 cm).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Wang in view of Vora teachings by detecting object of a specific size, as taught by Lee.
The motivation would be to provide an improved system for detecting and tracing the specific object (paragraph 518), as taught by Lee.
As per claim 14, please see the analysis of claim 7.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3-4, and 10-11, are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SYED Z HAIDER whose telephone number is (571)270-5169. The examiner can normally be reached MONDAY-FRIDAY 9-5:30 EST.
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/SYED HAIDER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2633