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 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) 1-5, 8-9 and 11 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wu (CN 216763677) in view of Schulz et al. (US Pub. No. 2019/0373251).
Regarding claims 1-5 and 8-9, Wu teaches camera pixel calibration apparatus, comprising:
a camera (Fig. 2), wherein the camera has a shooting lens; and
a reference assembly (4), wherein the reference assembly is disposed between the shotting lens and a coating material (2), wherein the reference assembly comprises a bracket having a calibration plate (4), and the calibration plate disposed close to the shooting lens (Fig. 2);
wherein the calibration plate (41 or 42) is disposed adjacent to an edge of the field of view of the shooting lens (Fig. 3) [claim 3]; and
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wherein the calibration plate (41/42) has a calibration surface close to the shooting lens, and a distance between the calibration surface and the coating material is less than the depth of field of the camera (during operation, the cameras focus on the reference objects 41/42 and the coating material 2, thus it implied that the distance between them is within the depth of view of the camera) [claim 4];
wherein the bracket has a first surface away from the calibration plate, and a reserved gap is provided between the first surface and the coating material (Fig. 2 annotated) [claim 5].
Wu does not specifically teach the following the bracket with a camera viewing window, and the calibration plate is disposed on a surface of the bracket close to the shooting lens; wherein the center of the camera viewing window coincides with the center of a field of view of the shooting lens [claim 2]; a light source, wherein the light source and the camera are located on the same side of the bracket [claim 8]; and the calibration plate and the bracket have different colors [claim 9].
Schulz teaches a camera pixel calibration comprises a reference assembly (102) comprises a bracket (106) with a camera viewing window, and the calibration plate (108) is disposed on a surface of the bracket close to the shotting lens; wherein the center of the camera viewing window coincides with the center of a field of view of the shooting lens (para. 95); a light source (206), wherein the light source and the camera are located on the same side of the bracket; and the calibration plate and the bracket have different colors (para. 97).
It would have been obvious to one having an ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate a bracket as taught by Schulz within said calibration apparatus in order to securely fix the camera, the light source and the calibration plate relative to one another.
Regarding claim 11, Wu teaches a winding device, comprising: a winding roller (1) configured to wind a coating material (2); and the camera pixel calibration apparatus according to claim 1 above, wherein the camera pixel calibration apparatus is disposed on a side of the coating material for shooting the coating material and calibrating camera pixel accuracy of the coating material (Fig. 2).
Claim(s) 10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wu in view of Schulz, and further in view of Brumbaugh et al. (US 2015/0035970).
Regarding claim 10, Wu, as modified by Schulz, teaches the invention as claimed in claim 1 above. Wu further teaches the shooting lens is configured to shoot contour features of the calibration plate and shoot the coating material, and the camera pixel calibration apparatus further comprises a controller, wherein the controller is configured to extract the contour feature of the calibration plate and calculate camera pixel accuracy of the calibration plate to obtain camera pixel accuracy of the coating material (analyzing relative position of the first and second reference objects implicitly involved extracting its contour features, pg. 2, ll. 19-24). Wu does not specifically teach extract the contour features using the blob analysis, however blob analysis is a well-known computer vision and image processing method (Brumbaugh’s para. 10). It would have been obvious to one having an ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to employ a well-known blob analysis method to extract the contour features in order to accurately obtain the alignment information of the coating material.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 6-7 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Regarding claims 6-7, applicant has sufficiently defined and claimed a camera pixel calibration apparatus, whereby the prior art does not teach or suggest the bracket is provided with a tab flattening portion and a second surface on which the calibration plate is disposed, and a perpendicular distance between the tab flattening portion and an extension plane of the second surface gradually increases in a direction leaving the calibration plate, in combination with all other limitations set forth in the claim.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MINH Q PHAN whose telephone number is (571)270-3898. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri 9am-5pm.
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MINH Q. PHAN
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2852
/MINH Q PHAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2852