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 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.
Status of Claims
Claims 1-10 are currently pending and are being hereby examined herein. Claims 1-10 are amended.
Response to Amendment / Remarks
Any reference to the prior office action refers to the Non-Final Rejection dated 16 October 2025.
Applicant’s arguments, with respect to the prior art rejections from the prior office action, have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument. All claims are amended, and all changes to the prior art rejections are due to said amendments to the claims.
Joint Inventors
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Drawings
The drawings are objected to under 37 CFR 1.83(a). The drawings must show every feature of the invention specified in the claims. Therefore, “A brain-computer interface, comprising:… the effector” and “A brain-computer interface, comprising:…the processing circuitry” (Claim 10) must be shown or the feature(s) canceled from the claim(s). Figure 1 currently shows that the effector 5 and processor 3 are separate from the brain-computer interface 1 (the arrow for brain computer interface 1 does not point to an area including processor 3 and effector 5). No new matter should be entered.
Corrected drawing sheets in compliance with 37 CFR 1.121(d) are required in reply to the Office action to avoid abandonment of the application. Any amended replacement drawing sheet should include all of the figures appearing on the immediate prior version of the sheet, even if only one figure is being amended. The figure or figure number of an amended drawing should not be labeled as “amended.” If a drawing figure is to be canceled, the appropriate figure must be removed from the replacement sheet, and where necessary, the remaining figures must be renumbered and appropriate changes made to the brief description of the several views of the drawings for consistency. Additional replacement sheets may be necessary to show the renumbering of the remaining figures. Each drawing sheet submitted after the filing date of an application must be labeled in the top margin as either “Replacement Sheet” or “New Sheet” pursuant to 37 CFR 1.121(d). If the changes are not accepted by the examiner, the applicant will be notified and informed of any required corrective action in the next Office action. The objection to the drawings will not be held in abeyance.
Claim Interpretation
Claim 1 recites “reiterating steps (a) to (e) until a criterion for ending the iterations is met”. The Examiner is interpreting the claims to require steps (a) to (e) to occur at least twice (i.e., the criterion for ending the iteration must not be met until “reiterating” / at least a second occurrence of steps (a) to (e) have occurred).
Claim Objections
The claims are objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 1: punctuation should be added between “met” and “wherein”.
Claims 1, 4, and 7-9: “the estimated target” should be “the estimated target position”.
Claim 3: “wherein the step of computing the target probability density is based on: a plurality of effector positions at times preceding the measurement time; and a plurality of movements defined by the predictive model at times preceding the measurement time” should be “wherein [[the]]a step of computing [[the]]a target probability density is based on: a plurality of effector positions at times preceding the measurement time; and a plurality of movements defined by the predictive model at times preceding the measurement time” (because Claim 3 does not depend from Claim 2, alternatively, Applicant could change the scope of the claims presented and make Claim 3 dependent on Claim 2).
Claim 6: “a quantity comprising the target probability density” should be “[[a]]the quantity comprising the target probability density”.
Claim 7: “the interface” technically lacks antecedent basis.
Claim 10: the antecedent basis of this dependent claim is not consistent (e.g., “A brain-computer interface” and “the effector” are recited in Claim 10, both were introduced in Claim 1).
Appropriate corrections are required.
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 10 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. Applicant has amended Claim 10 to recite “the effector” instead of “an effector”. In view of the specification and drawings, “the effector” being part of “A brain-computer interface” is indefinite (see paragraph 23 of the specification and Figure 1: the effector 5 is shown / described separate from a brain-computer interface 1). For the purposes of compact prosecution, the examiner will assume multiple interpretations including that the claim refers to a system including a brain-computer interface. Appropriate corrections are required.
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.
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.
Claims 1-10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over IEEE Article Determination of Local Goal for a Mobile Robot with Sporadic Human Commands of Tele-operation (Noh et al., hereinafter, Noh) in view of frontiers in NEUROSCIENCE article Unsupervised adaptation of brain-machine interface decoders (Gürel and Mehring, hereinafter, Gürel).
Regarding Claim 1, Noh discloses A method for controlling movement, through a space, of an effector via a brain-computer interface, the movement bringing the effector closer to a target position (see at least page 546 column 1: brain controlled robot), the method comprising:
(a) acquiring electrophysiological signals …of an individual, at a measurement time (see at least page 546 column 1: thought control), the effector occupying a position, in the space, at said measurement time (see at least page 548 column 1: mobile robot has a state r);
(b) processing the electrophysiological signals to form input data; (c) processing the input data using a predictive model implemented by the brain-computer interface, to determine a first effector movement at the measurement time (see at least page 548 column 1 and page 549 column 2: user commands determined include forward, turn left, turn right, and stop);
(d) determining a corrected effector movement, based on the first effector movement determined by the predictive model (see at least page 550 column 1 and Fig. 2: “A feature of the PLGD method is that user’s intention is estimated in form of a path using the accumulated input sequence”);
(e) controlling the movement of the effector through the space, by the brain-computer interface, based on the determined corrected effector movement (see at least Fig. 2); and
(f) incrementing the measurement time and reiterating steps (a) to (e) until a criterion for ending the iterations is met (see at least Fig. 2: movement occurs across time)
wherein the method further comprises, in each step (d) following a first iteration of steps (a) to (e):
(di) estimating the target position, at the measurement time, based on: an effector position at the measurement time and a time preceding the measurement time; and the first effector movement defined by the predictive model at the measurement time and at least at the time preceding the measurement time (see at least page 547 column 2, page 548 column 1, page 548 column 2, and page 549 column 1: “mobile robot can accumulate the user input and estimate the waypoint probabilities”; “no specific goals are given in this study”; robot determines a local goal);
(dii) based on the estimated target position, determining a second effector movement directly towards the estimated target; and (diii) based on the determined first effector movement and the determined second effector movement towards the estimated target resulting from the sub-step (dii) determine the corrected effector movement at the measurement time (see at least page 548 column 2, page 550 column 1, and Fig. 2: robot moves according to the PLGD method / local goal).
Noh does not explicitly disclose (a) acquiring electrophysiological signals produced in a cortex of an individual.
Gürel, in the same field of controlling effectors with the brain (Gürel is directed to moving an effector to a target unknown to the decoder (see Figure 1) and determining optimal input signals and teaches “deviations from straight line could be punished” (see at least page 12 column 2)), and therefore analogous art, teaches (a) acquiring electrophysiological signals produced in a cortex of an individual (see at least page 1 column 1: brain signals may be acquired from the surface of the cerebral cortex).
Combining the teachings Gürel with the teachings of Noh would have been obvious, before the effective filing date of the invention, with a reasonable expectation of success, to one having ordinary skill in the art, with the motivation of implementing brain control using a known technique (see at least Gürel page 1 column 1).
Regarding Claim 2, the Noh and Gürel combination teaches Claim 1. Noh further discloses wherein the sub-step (di) further comprises:
computing a target probability density, corresponding to a probability density reflecting the probability that each point in space corresponds to the target position (see at least page 548 column 1, page 548 column 2, and Fig. 1: “The desired path will be where waypoints is concentrated”; “Waypoints was estimated on each grid, and these spreaded radially from the robot”); and
determining a particular point in the space maximizing the target probability density, or a quantity comprising the target probability density, the determined point corresponding to the estimated target position (see at least page 548 column 1, Fig. 1, and Fig. 2: “The desired path will be where waypoints is concentrated”; the robot moves according to the PLGB method / desired path).
Regarding Claim 3, the Noh and Gürel combination teaches Claim 1. Furthermore, Noh further discloses wherein the step of computing the target probability density is based on: plurality of effector positions at times preceding the measurement time; and a plurality of movements defined by the predictive model at times preceding the measurement time (see at least page 448 column 2 and page 550 column 1: “A feature of the PLGD method is that user’s intention is estimated in form of a path using the accumulated input sequence”).
Regarding Claim 4, the Noh and Gürel combination teaches Claim 3. Furthermore, Noh further discloses wherein the target probability density is computed based on a combination of: a first conditional probability density that is dependent on effector positions at times preceding the measurement time, and effector movements towards the estimated target defined by the predictive model at times preceding the measurement time (see at least page 550 column 1: “A feature of the PLGD method is that user’s intention is estimated in form of a path using the accumulated input sequence”); and a second conditional probability density dependent on the effector position at the measurement time, and the effector movement towards the estimated target determined by the predictive model at the measurement time (see at least page 549 column 1: “We consider two user input types. One is a direction, and the other is a position. Mobile robot should match these inputs to the map as probabilities.”).
Regarding Claim 5, the Noh and Gürel combination teaches Claim 4. Furthermore, Noh further discloses wherein the first conditional probability density is weighted by a forgetting factor (see at least page 547 column 1: damping ratio used in prediction process).
Regarding Claim 6, the Noh and Gürel combination teaches Claim 2. Furthermore, wherein the sub-step (di) further comprises determining the particular point to maximize a quantity comprising the target probability density, the quantity corresponding to the target probability density decreased: by a first distance weighted by a first regularization factor between each point and the target position estimated at a preceding measurement time; and/or by a second distance weighted by a second regularization factor between each point and the effector position at the measurement time is obvious in view of teachings of Gürel. Gürel teaches “the cost function could be alternatively derived from only trajectories instead of control signals” and “deviations from straight line could be punished” (see page 12 column 2). In view of this, at least wherein the sub-step (di) further comprises determining the particular point to maximize a quantity comprising the target probability density, the quantity corresponding to the target probability density decreased…by a second distance weighted by a second regularization factor between each point and the effector position at the measurement time would be obvious (i.e., penalize being farther from the current position, prioritize a straight line).
Further combining Gürel, specifically the teachings directed to punishing deviations from a straight line, with Noh would have been obvious, before the effective filing date of the invention, with a reasonable expectation of success, to one having ordinary skill in the art, with the motivation of generating precise trajectories even when a model is unsupervised (see at least page 1).
Regarding Claim 7, the Noh and Gürel combination teaches Claim 1. Furthermore, Noh further discloses wherein, in the sub-step (dii), the second effector movement towards the estimated target is determined so that the interface moves the effector from the position at the measurement time to the target position estimated at the measurement time (see at least Fig. 2: robot moves along the path).
Regarding Claim 8, the Noh and Gürel combination teaches Claim 1. Furthermore, Noh further discloses wherein, in the sub-step (diii), the corrected movement is a weighted combination of the first effector movement determined by the predictive model and the determined second effector movement towards the estimated target (see at least Algorithm 2 and Fig. 2).
Regarding Claim 9, the Noh and Gürel combination teaches Claim 8. Furthermore, Noh further teaches further comprising determining the weighted combination using a first weighting factor applied to the first effector movement determined by the predictive model; and a second weighting factor applied to the determined second effector movement towards the estimated target (see at least Algorithm 2 and Fig. 2).
Regarding Claim 10, the Noh and Gürel combination teaches Claim 1. Furthermore, the Noh and Gürel combination teaches (as part of the same combination as Claim 1 / with the same motivation to combine as Claim 1) A brain-computer interface (see at least Noh page 546 column 1), comprising:
sensors configured to acquire the electrophysiological signals representative of a cortical activity (see at least Gürel Figure 2);
the effector, which is configured to be actuated by a control signal generated by the brain-computer interface (see at least page 548 column 1: mobile robot); and
processing circuitry configured to determine the effector movement depending on the input data resulting from the detected electrophysiological signals, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to implement steps (c) to (f) of the method according to Claim 1, at various measurement times (see at least Gürel Figure 2).
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ALEXANDRA ROBYN MORFORD whose telephone number is (571)272-6109. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 8:00 AM - 4:00 PM ET.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Thomas Worden can be reached at (571) 272-4876. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/A.R.M./Examiner, Art Unit 3658
/THOMAS E WORDEN/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3658
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