DETAILED ACTION
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 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis 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.
Applicant’s amendment/response filed 12/04/2025 has been entered and made of record. Claims 1-30 are pending in the application.
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.
Claim(s) 1-10, 14-23, and 26-28 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhu et al. ("Cylindrical and asymmetrical 3d convolution networks for lidar segmentation," Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF conference on computer vision and pattern recognition, 2021) in view of Harris et al. (US 6304265).
Regarding claim 1, Zhu teaches/suggests: An apparatus comprising:
a processing system that includes one or more processors and one or more memories coupled to the one or more processors (Zhu §1 ¶1 “3D LiDAR sensor has become an indispensable device in modern autonomous driving vehicles”), the processing system configured to:
receive sensor data associated with a scene (Zhu Fig. 2 “LiDAR point cloud is fed into MLP to get the point-wise features”);
generate a cylindrical representation associated with the scene (Zhu Fig. 2 “these features are reassigned based on the [cylindrical] partition”);
based on the modified cylindrical representation, perform one or more three-dimensional (3D) perception operations associated with the scene (Zhu §4 ¶1 “we extend our method to Li-DAR panoptic segmentation and 3D detection”).
Zhu further teaches/suggests a feature of the cylindrical representation (Zhu Fig. 2 “these features are reassigned based on the [cylindrical] partition”). Zhu does not teach/suggest:
based on detecting a feature of the cylindrical representation being included in a first region of the cylindrical representation, modify the cylindrical representation, wherein modifying the cylindrical representation includes relocating the feature from the first region to a second region that is different than the first region;
Harris, however, teaches/suggests relocating the feature (Harris col. 10 ll. 18-31 “reflecting one point (V.sub.2.fwdarw.V.sub.2 ') across the W=0 boundary causes the is orientation of three points (V.sub.0, V.sub.1, and V.sub.2) to be reversed”). Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art to modify a feature point of Zhu to be reflected as taught/suggested by Harris to reverse it. As such, Zhu as modified by Harris teaches/suggests:
based on detecting a feature of the cylindrical representation being included in a first region of the cylindrical representation, modify the cylindrical representation, wherein modifying the cylindrical representation includes relocating the feature from the first region to a second region that is different than the first region (Zhu Fig. 2 “these features are reassigned based on the [cylindrical] partition” Harris col. 10 ll. 18-31 “reflecting one point (V.sub.2.fwdarw.V.sub.2 ') across the W=0 boundary causes the is orientation of three points (V.sub.0, V.sub.1, and V.sub.2) to be reversed”);
Regarding claim 2, Zhu as modified by Harris teaches/suggests: The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the feature is associated with a radial distance from an origin of the cylindrical representation (Zhu §3.2 ¶2 “where radius ρ (distance to origin in x-y axis) and azimuth θ (angle from x-axis to y-axis) are calculated”), and wherein the processing system is further configured to modify the radial distance based on a radial adjustment value to generate the modified cylindrical representation (Harris col. 10 ll. 18-31 “reflecting one point (V.sub.2.fwdarw.V.sub.2 ') across the W=0 boundary causes the is orientation of three points (V.sub.0, V.sub.1, and V.sub.2) to be reversed”). The reflecting, e.g., from 1 to -1, meets the radial adjustment value. The same rationale to combine as set forth in the rejection of claim 1 above is incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 3, Zhu as modified by Harris teaches/suggests: The apparatus of claim 2, wherein the radial adjustment value is negative one (Zhu §3.2 ¶2 “where radius ρ (distance to origin in x-y axis) and azimuth θ (angle from x-axis to y-axis) are calculated” Harris col. 10 ll. 18-31 “reflecting one point (V.sub.2.fwdarw.V.sub.2 ') across the W=0 boundary causes the is orientation of three points (V.sub.0, V.sub.1, and V.sub.2) to be reversed”). The same rationale to combine as set forth in the rejection of claim 1 above is incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 4, Zhu as modified by Harris teaches/suggests: The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the feature is associated with an angular distance from a polar axis of the cylindrical representation (Zhu §3.2 ¶2 “where radius ρ (distance to origin in x-y axis) and azimuth θ (angle from x-axis to y-axis) are calculated”), and wherein the processing system is further configured to modify the angular distance based on an angular shift value to generate the modified cylindrical representation (Harris col. 10 ll. 18-31 “reflecting one point (V.sub.2.fwdarw.V.sub.2 ') across the W=0 boundary causes the is orientation of three points (V.sub.0, V.sub.1, and V.sub.2) to be reversed”). The reflecting, i.e., by 180 degrees or pi radians, meets the angular shift value. The same rationale to combine as set forth in the rejection of claim 1 above is incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 5, Zhu as modified by Harris teaches/suggests: The apparatus of claim 4, wherein the angular shift value is pi radians (Zhu §3.2 ¶2 “where radius ρ (distance to origin in x-y axis) and azimuth θ (angle from x-axis to y-axis) are calculated” Harris col. 10 ll. 18-31 “reflecting one point (V.sub.2.fwdarw.V.sub.2 ') across the W=0 boundary causes the is orientation of three points (V.sub.0, V.sub.1, and V.sub.2) to be reversed”). The same rationale to combine as set forth in the rejection of claim 1 above is incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 6, Zhu as modified by Harris teaches/suggests: The apparatus of claim 1, wherein a boundary between the first region and the second region corresponds to a particular value of an angular coordinate associated with the cylindrical representation (Zhu Fig. 2 “these features are reassigned based on the [cylindrical] partition” Harris col. 10 ll. 18-31 “reflecting one point (V.sub.2.fwdarw.V.sub.2 ') across the W=0 boundary causes the is orientation of three points (V.sub.0, V.sub.1, and V.sub.2) to be reversed”). The same rationale to combine as set forth in the rejection of claim 1 above is incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 7, Zhu as modified by Harris teaches/suggests: The apparatus of claim 6, wherein the particular value is zero (Zhu Fig. 2 “these features are reassigned based on the [cylindrical] partition” Harris col. 10 ll. 18-31 “reflecting one point (V.sub.2.fwdarw.V.sub.2 ') across the W=0 boundary causes the is orientation of three points (V.sub.0, V.sub.1, and V.sub.2) to be reversed”). The same rationale to combine as set forth in the rejection of claim 1 above is incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 8, Zhu as modified by Harris teaches/suggests: The apparatus of claim 6, wherein the first region is associated with values of the angular coordinate of greater than or equal to zero, and wherein the second region is associated with values of the angular coordinate of less than zero (Zhu Fig. 2 “these features are reassigned based on the [cylindrical] partition” Harris col. 10 ll. 18-31 “reflecting one point (V.sub.2.fwdarw.V.sub.2 ') across the W=0 boundary causes the is orientation of three points (V.sub.0, V.sub.1, and V.sub.2) to be reversed”). The same rationale to combine as set forth in the rejection of claim 1 above is incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 9, Zhu as modified by Harris teaches/suggests: The apparatus of claim 6, wherein the processing system is further configured to reflect the feature across the boundary to generate the modified cylindrical representation (Zhu Fig. 2 “these features are reassigned based on the [cylindrical] partition” Harris col. 10 ll. 18-31 “reflecting one point (V.sub.2.fwdarw.V.sub.2 ') across the W=0 boundary causes the is orientation of three points (V.sub.0, V.sub.1, and V.sub.2) to be reversed”). The same rationale to combine as set forth in the rejection of claim 1 above is incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 10, Zhu as modified by Harris teaches/suggests: The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the one or more 3D perception operations include one or more of object detection, instance segmentation, lane detection, or road detection (Zhu §4 ¶1 “we extend our method to Li-DAR panoptic segmentation and 3D detection”).
Claims 14-23 recite limitation(s) similar in scope to those of claims 1-10, respectively, and are rejected for the same reason(s).
Claim 26 recites limitation(s) similar in scope to those of claim 1, and is rejected for the same reason(s). Zhu as modified by Harris further teaches/suggests a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions executable by one or more processors (Zhu §1 ¶1 “3D LiDAR sensor has become an indispensable device in modern autonomous driving vehicles”).
Regarding claim 27, Zhu as modified by Harris teaches/suggests: The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 26, wherein the feature is associated with a radial distance from an origin of the cylindrical representation, wherein the feature is associated with an angular distance from a polar axis of the cylindrical representation (Zhu §3.2 ¶2 “where radius ρ (distance to origin in x-y axis) and azimuth θ (angle from x-axis to y-axis) are calculated”), and wherein relocating the feature from the first region to the second region includes:
modifying the radial distance based on a radial adjustment value; and modifying the angular distance based on an angular shift value (Zhu §3.2 ¶2 “where radius ρ (distance to origin in x-y axis) and azimuth θ (angle from x-axis to y-axis) are calculated” Harris col. 10 ll. 18-31 “reflecting one point (V.sub.2.fwdarw.V.sub.2 ') across the W=0 boundary causes the is orientation of three points (V.sub.0, V.sub.1, and V.sub.2) to be reversed”).
The same rationale to combine as set forth in the rejection of claim 1 above is incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 28, Zhu as modified by Harris teaches/suggests: The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 27, wherein the angular shift value is pi radians, and wherein the radial adjustment value is negative one (Zhu §3.2 ¶2 “where radius ρ (distance to origin in x-y axis) and azimuth θ (angle from x-axis to y-axis) are calculated” Harris col. 10 ll. 18-31 “reflecting one point (V.sub.2.fwdarw.V.sub.2 ') across the W=0 boundary causes the is orientation of three points (V.sub.0, V.sub.1, and V.sub.2) to be reversed”). The same rationale to combine as set forth in the rejection of claim 1 above is incorporated herein.
Claim(s) 11-13, 24-25, and 29-30 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhu et al. ("Cylindrical and asymmetrical 3d convolution networks for lidar segmentation," Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF conference on computer vision and pattern recognition, 2021) in view of Harris et al. (US 6304265) as applied to claims 1, 14, and 26 above, and further in view of Bravo Orellana et al. (US 2019/0271780).
Regarding claim 11, Zhu as modified by Harris teaches/suggests: The apparatus of claim 1, further comprising:
a first sensor configured to generate first sensor data (Zhu §1 ¶1 “3D LiDAR sensor has become an indispensable device in modern autonomous driving vehicles”);
Zhu and Harris are silent regarding:
a second sensor configured to generate second sensor data, wherein the sensor data includes the first sensor data and the second sensor data.
Bravo Orellana, however, teaches/suggests:
a second sensor configured to generate second sensor data, wherein the sensor data includes the first sensor data and the second sensor data (Bravo Orellana Fig. 2: the illustrated front- and rear-facing sensors).
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the vehicles of Zhu as modified by Harris to include the front- and rear-facing sensors of Bravo Orellana for the autonomous driving.
Regarding claim 12, Zhu as modified by Harris and Bravo Orellana teaches/suggests: The apparatus of claim 11, wherein the scene includes an object represented by both the first sensor data and the second sensor data (Bravo Orellana Fig. 2: the illustrated front- and rear-facing sensors [The object is an inherent and/or implicit feature of both sensors.]), and wherein one or more of continuity or linearity associated with the object is increased in the modified cylindrical representation as compared to the cylindrical representation (Zhu Fig. 2 “these features are reassigned based on the [cylindrical] partition” Harris col. 10 ll. 18-31 “reflecting one point (V.sub.2.fwdarw.V.sub.2 ') across the W=0 boundary causes the is orientation of three points (V.sub.0, V.sub.1, and V.sub.2) to be reversed”). The reflecting meets the limitation “increased.” The same rationales to combine as set forth in the rejection of claims 1 and 11 above are incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 13, Zhu as modified by Harris and Bravo Orellana teaches/suggests: The apparatus of claim 11, wherein the apparatus corresponds to a vehicle, wherein the first sensor corresponds to a front-facing sensor of the vehicle, and wherein the second sensor corresponds to a rear-facing sensor of the vehicle or a side-facing sensor of the vehicle (Bravo Orellana Fig. 2: the illustrated front- and rear-facing sensors). The same rationale to combine as set forth in the rejection of claim 11 above is incorporated herein.
Claims 24 and 25 recite limitation(s) similar in scope to those of claims 12 and 13, respectively, and are rejected for the same reason(s).
Claims 29 and 30 recite limitation(s) similar in scope to those of claims 12 and 13, respectively, and are rejected for the same reason(s).
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 12/04/2025 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant argues “Zhu does not modify a cylindrical representation or relocate a feature from a first region of a cylindrical representation to a second region.” See Remarks, p. 10.
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Examiner respectfully disagrees. Zhu does not relocate a feature, but does modify the cylindrical partition by assigning features to it. See Fig. 4 of Zhu (reproduced above).
Applicant further argues “Harris makes no disclosure of using a cylindrical representation ... 'reflecting' the point as described by Harris is not performed based on detecting that the point is included in a region ... the 'reflecting' described by Harris is not a modification of data.” See Remarks, pp. 10-11.
Examiner respectfully disagrees. Whether or not the reflecting of Harris is only for illustration, It would have been obvious that a point could be reversed by reflecting it, i.e., moving it from one region to an opposite region. In addition, the point has to be detected first in order to be moved. In view of Zhu and Harris, reflecting a feature of the cylindrical partition to reverse it meets the claimed limitation.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
US 2005/0007370 – move control point in cylindrical coordinates
US 2012/0268571 – displacement map in cylindrical coordinates
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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.
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/ANH-TUAN V NGUYEN/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2619