DETAILED ACTION
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1 and 4 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.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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.
Claims 1 and 4 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Cheng et al. (P. Cheng, M. Indri, F. Sibona, M. Rose and G. Prato, “Dynamic Path Planning of a mobile robot adopting a costmap layer approach in ROS2”, 2022 IEEE 27th International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA), 6-9 September 2022).
Regarding claim 1, Cheng teaches a method for evaluating a robot in simulation, performed by a computing device (see Cheng Abstract, section IV “IMPLEMENTATION IN ROS2 FRAMEWORK”, and section V “SIMULATION TESTS AND ANALYSIS”, comprising:
creating a robot description file according to a physical property of the robot (see Cheng section IV regarding the simulated robot “TurtleBot3” which is described with physical model and interface packages, i.e. robot description files);
creating an environment description file according to an environment (see Cheng section V(A) “Experimental setup” which teaches that before launching the navigation tests, i.e. simulations, SLAM was performed to obtain and upload “the static map of the virtual environment”);
obtaining an obstacle description file configured to define a starting area, an ending area, and a plurality of obstacles (see Cheng section V(A) regarding using Webots to create realistic 3D virtual worlds including the physical properties of each object, including dynamic obstacles. See also fig. 5 regarding a test scheme which comprises 3 dynamic obstacles, a robot starting pose and a goal position);
creating a virtual environment according to the environment description file and the obstacle description file (see Cheng section V(A) regarding the realistic 3D virtual world which is created using the obstacles and the static map),
creating a virtual robot according to the robot description file, and outputting simulation information of the virtual robot in the virtual environment by a physics simulation engine (see sections IV and V regarding the use of the physical model and interface packages, the defined obstacles, and the 3D world to perform simulation tests. This requires that the robot be represented virtually, i.e. creating a virtual robot according to the physical model and interface packages. See also section V regarding the simulation test results including detection of collisions with the dynamic objects, i.e. using a physics simulation engine);
generating and sending navigation information to the physics simulation engine according to the simulation information by a robot navigation procedure, wherein the robot navigation procedure is Robot Operating System 2 navigation stack (see Cheng section I “INTRODUCTION” and section 2 “BACKGROUND” regarding the use of ROS2, including the Nav2 stack, to perform the simulation. See also section V regarding the simulation test results including detection of collisions with the dynamic objects); and
outputting evaluation information by the physics simulation engine when the virtual robot reaches the ending area; wherein the evaluation information is further converted into a goal rate, a hit rate and a timeout rate (see Cheng section V where the performance indices for the tests include “Smooth navigations”, i.e. goal rate, “Collisions”, i.e. hit rate, and “Wait recoveries”, i.e. timeout rate).
Regarding claim 4, the claim is directed toward a non-transitory computer-readable recording medium storing a program, wherein a computing device loads the program and performs the steps of the method of claim 1. Cheng teaches where the simulation is performed on a computer, thus requiring the claimed non-transitory computer-readable recording medium. Therefore, claim 4 is rejected under the same rationales used in the rejection of claim 1.
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 2 and 5 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cheng et al. (P. Cheng, M. Indri, F. Sibona, M. Rose and G. Prato, “Dynamic Path Planning of a mobile robot adopting a costmap layer approach in ROS2”, 2022 IEEE 27th International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA), 6-9 September 2022) in view of Applicant’s admitted prior art.
Regarding claim 3, Cheng teaches where the method for evaluating the robot in simulation of claim 1, wherein the robot description file is in unified robot description format (URDF) (inherent. Robots in ROS2 (used in Cheng) are described using URDF), the physical property includes a plurality of placement positions of multiple joints (inherent) and an Optical Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) (see Cheng section V regarding the TurtleBot3 robot used in the simulation comprising LIDAR sensor)
However, Cheng does not teach where the method further includes: executing a verification procedure according to the robot description file to confirm a plurality of directions of the plurality of joints.
Applicant describes the verification procedure in [0027] of the submitted specification:
0027] Specifically, every robot has a blueprint that can be converted into a URDF file, a digital description of its physical properties. The URDF files can be put into physics-based simulation platform as a 3D model retaining all the robot’s physics properties, which become the digital twin of the robot. Please refer to FIG. 2 and FIG. 3. FIG. 2 is a design diagram of the robot adopted in an embodiment of the present disclosure. FIG. 3 is a design diagram of the LiDAR of the robot adopted in an embodiment of the present disclosure. In an embodiment, the robot adopts a Wheeltec Ackermann robot with Wheeltec LD14 LiDAR that lacked a URDF file. Therefore, it is necessary to create a URDF file for this robot, including the joint positions, physical properties, and measurement data of the robot. To ensure the accuracy of the URDF file, in one embodiment, the present disclosure uses the RVIZ visualization tool in ROS2 as a verification program to confirm the orientation of the robot’s joints.
It is clear from [0027] (Applicant’s admitted prior art) that the verification procedure comprises a person looking at a visualization of the robot using RVIZ to confirm that the URDF file correctly describes the robot. As such, the entirety of the limitation is simply viewing a representation of the robot using a prior art tool to make sure the URDF is correct. Cheng uses RVIZ to visualize the environment but is silent on using RVIZ to visualize the robot (see the caption for fig. 4 of Cheng).
Since Cheng teaches the use of RVIZ to visualize one aspect of the simulation (the environment), it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to use RVIZ to visualize another aspect of the simulation (the robot). The reason for this would be to ensure that the URDF for a particular robot being simulated is correct, such as the TurtleBot3 in Cheng, because an incorrectly described robot would not be useful for performing the simulation since it would, naturally, provide incorrect results.
Regarding claim 5, the claim is directed toward a non-transitory computer-readable recording medium storing a program, wherein a computing device loads the program and performs the steps of the method of claim 2. Modified Cheng teaches where the simulation is performed on a computer, thus requiring the claimed non-transitory computer-readable recording medium. Therefore, claim 5 is rejected under the same rationales used in the rejection of claim 2.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3 and 6 are objected to as being dependent upon respective rejected base claims, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claims and any intervening claims.
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 or any earlier communication from the examiner should be directed to Examiner Peter Nolan, whose telephone number is 571-270-7016. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday from 7:30 am to 5:00 pm.
The fax number for the organization to which 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, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free).
/Peter D Nolan/
Examiner, Art Unit 3661
Prosecution Insights