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 .
Status of Claims
Claims 1-20 are pending.
Claims 1, 9, 13 and 15 have been amended.
This non-final office action is in response to the “Amendments and Remarks” received on 01/16/2026.
Response to Applicant’s Arguments/Remarks
Amendments and Remarks filed on 01/16/2026 have been fully considered and are addressed as follow:
Regarding the Claim Rejections Under 35 U.S.C. § 103: Applicants “Amendment and Remarks” have been fully considered. Applicant has amended the independent claim and these amendments have changed the scope of the original application and the Office has supplied new grounds for rejection attached below in the non-final office action, and therefore the prior arguments are considered moot.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 11/05/2025 is being considered by the examiner.
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, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 15, 16, 18, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rodrigues (US PGPub 2023/0221136) in view of Anastassov (US PGPub 2022/0163347) in view of Giurgiu (US PGPub 2020/0398856) and in further view of Corte (US PGPub 2023/0237813).
With respect to claim 1: Rodrigues teaches a method comprising:
receiving probe data of an autonomous vehicle traveling on a roadway [Rodrigues ¶ 0025 and Fig. 1 element 120];
determining features associated with the plurality of lateral slices [Rodrigues ¶ 0028 “The probe data object detection unit 150 is configured to perform object detection on the pipeline and the probe data 120 in order to identify features such as intersections, road boundaries, lane lines, buildings or other suitable features.”];
based on classification of each slice, generating a trajectory for the autonomous vehicle [Rodrigues ¶ 0051 “The shapefiles are layered in order to determine vectors for traveling along a network of roadways. The shapefiles are usable in app such as navigation systems and autonomous driving for identifying directions of travel for vehicles.”]; and
adjusting autonomous control of the autonomous vehicle based on the generated trajectory [Rodrigues ¶ 0051].
Rodrigues does not teach grouping a portion of the plurality of lateral slices into a lane group based on the features, wherein the grouping is created based on lateral slices comprising lane transitions and lane creations in the roadway; classifying each slice based on the lane group;
However, in a related field of invention, Anastassov does teach grouping a portion of the plurality of lateral slices into a lane group based on the features, wherein the grouping is created based on lateral slices comprising lane transitions and lane creations in the roadway [Anastassov ¶ 0065 "create at least one continuous road path"]; classifying each slice based on the lane group [Anastassov ¶ 0065 "each grid cell, the analysis module can determine summary statistics"];
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention with a reasonable expectation of success to combine the roadmap generation system where a lane network is generated based on object detection as taught by Rodrigues with determining lane groups for sections of the roadway base on shared features as taught in Anastassov in order to allow a system for mapping road lanes to accurately reconstruct the curves/ turns within an intersection.
Rodrigues and Anastassov do not teach discretizing the probe data into a plurality of lateral slices of the roadway;
However, in a related field of invention, Giurigu teaches discretizing the probe data into a plurality of lateral slices of the roadway [Giurgiu ¶ 0056];
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention with a reasonable expectation of success to combine the road geometry representation method taught by Rodrigues and Anastassov with sequence of lateral slices as taught in Giurgiu in order to allow a system for mapping road lanes to process discrete, manageable chunks of data.
Rodrigues, Anastassov, and Giurigu does not teach wherein the lane transitions and lane creations are detected based on a changing width of one or more affected lanes within a respective lane group.
However, in a related field of invention, Corte does teach wherein the lane transitions and lane creations are detected based on a changing width of one or more affected lanes within a respective lane group [Corte ¶ 0101 "For example, the physical feature extractor 504 may determine that the first traffic lane is intersecting the second traffic lane when the distance between the boundary points defining opposite edges of the first traffic lane exceeds a threshold defined by the typical width of a traffic lane. "].
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention with a reasonable expectation of success to combine the road geometry representation method taught by Rodrigues, Anastassov, and Giurigu with detecting the lane transitions and lane creations based on a changing width as taught in Corte in order to improve differentiation between different physical features present in the sensor data [Corte ¶ 0095].
With respect to claim 2: Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, and Corte teach the method of claim 1. Anastassov further teaches wherein a CNN network groups the portion of the plurality of lateral slices into the lane group [Anastassov ¶ 0120]. The motivation above in the rejection of claim 1 applies here.
With respect to claim 4: Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, and Corte teach the method of claim 1. Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, and Corte do not each that the wherein each lateral slice comprises five meters of the roadway.
However, Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, and Corte at least suggest the idea of wherein each lateral slice comprises five meters of the roadway [Giurgiu ¶ 0056]. Further, the “mere scaling up” or “limitations relating to the size” or “recitation of relative dimensions” are generally not patentably distinguishable from a prior art device with both functioning in the same manner. See MPEP 2144.04 IV. It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention with a reasonable expectation of success to achieve such dimensions in order to process discrete and manageable chunks of data.
With respect to claim 5: Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, and Corte teach the method of claim 1. Anastassov further teaches wherein each slice of the portion of the plurality of lateral slices is classified as a start of the lane group, an interior of the lane group, or an end of the lane group [Anastassov, seed points are being interpreted as the slices; ¶ 00070 “start seed point”; ¶ 0076 "termination seed point and start seed point"].
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention with a reasonable expectation of success to combine the road geometry representation using lateral slicing method as taught by Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, and Corte with each lateral slice classified as a start, interior, or end of the lane as taught in Anastassov in order to create a simplified representation of probe data to increase processing speed while saving storage resources [Anastassov ¶ 0036].
With respect to claim 7: Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, and Corte teach the method of claim 1. Anastassov further teaches further comprising determining that a slice of the plurality of lateral slices classifies as a transition between lane groups [Anastassov ¶ 0076 "intersection point"]. The motivation above in the rejection of claim 5 applies here.
With respect to claim 8: Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, and Corte teach the method of claim 1. Rodrigues further teaches wherein each lane group comprises a left and right road boundary [Rodrigues ¶ 0098 and Fig. 9B element 930].
With respect to claim 15: Rodrigues teaches a non-transitory machine-readable medium having instructions stored therein, which when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to [Rodrigues ¶ 0099 and 0101 and Fig. 10 element 1004]:
receive probe data of an autonomous vehicle traveling on a roadway [Rodrigues ¶ 0025 and Fig. 1 elements 120];
determine features associated with the plurality of lateral slices [Rodrigues ¶ 0028 “The probe data object detection unit 150 is configured to perform object detection on the pipeline and the probe data 120 in order to identify features such as intersections, road boundaries, lane lines, buildings or other suitable features.”];
based on classification of each slice, generating a trajectory for the autonomous vehicle;
and [Rodrigues ¶ 0051 “The shapefiles are layered in order to determine vectors for traveling along a network of roadways. The shapefiles are usable in app such as navigation systems and autonomous driving for identifying directions of travel for vehicles.”]
adjusting autonomous control of the autonomous vehicle based on the generated trajectory [Rodrigues ¶ 0051].
Rodrigues does not teach grouping a portion of the plurality of lateral slices into a lane group based on the features, wherein the grouping is created based on lateral slices comprising lane transitions and lane creations in the roadway; classifying each slice based on the lane group;
However, in a related field of invention, Anastassov does teach group a portion of the plurality of lateral slices into a lane group based on the features, wherein the grouping is created based on lateral slices comprising lane transitions and lane creations in the roadway [Anastassov ¶ 0065 "create at least one continuous road path"];
determine that one or more slices of the plurality of lateral slices classifies as transitions between lane groups [Anastassov ¶ 0076 "intersection point"].
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention with a reasonable expectation of success to combine the roadmap generation system where a lane network is generated based on object detection as taught by Rodrigues with determining lane groups for sections of the roadway base on shared features as taught in Anastassov in order to allow a system for mapping road lanes to accurately reconstruct the curves/ turns within an intersection.
Rodrigues and Anastassov do not teach discretize the probe data into a plurality of lateral slices of the roadway.
However, in a related field of invention, Giurigu teaches discretizing the probe data into a plurality of lateral slices of the roadway [Giurgiu ¶ 0056];
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention with a reasonable expectation of success to combine the road geometry representation method taught by Rodrigues and Anastassov with sequence of lateral slices as taught in Giurgiu in order to allow a system for mapping road lanes to process discrete, manageable chunks of data.
Rodrigues, Anastassov, and Giurigu does not teach wherein the lane transitions and lane creations are detected based on a changing width of one or more affected lanes within a respective lane group.
However, in a related field of invention, Corte does teach wherein the lane transitions and lane creations are detected based on a changing width of one or more affected lanes within a respective lane group [Corte ¶ 0101 "For example, the physical feature extractor 504 may determine that the first traffic lane is intersecting the second traffic lane when the distance between the boundary points defining opposite edges of the first traffic lane exceeds a threshold defined by the typical width of a traffic lane. "].
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention with a reasonable expectation of success to combine the road geometry representation method taught by Rodrigues, Anastassov, and Giurigu with detecting the lane transitions and lane creations based on a changing width as taught in Corte in order to improve differentiation between different physical features present in the sensor data [Corte ¶ 0095].
With respect to claim 16: Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, and Corte teach the non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 15. Anastassov further teaches wherein a CNN network groups the portion of the plurality of lateral slices into the lane group [Anastassov ¶ 0120]. The motivation above in the rejection of claim 15 applies here.
With respect to claim 18: Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, and Corte teach the non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 15. Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, and Corte do not each that the wherein each lateral slice comprises five meters of the roadway.
However, Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, and Corte at least suggest the idea of wherein each lateral slice comprises five meters of the roadway [Giurgiu ¶ 0056]. Further, the “mere scaling up” or “limitations relating to the size” or “recitation of relative dimensions” are generally not patentably distinguishable from a prior art device with both functioning in the same manner. See MPEP 2144.04 IV. It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention with a reasonable expectation of success to achieve such dimensions in order to process discrete and manageable chunks of data.
With respect to claim 20: Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, and Corte teach the non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 15. Rodrigues further teaches wherein each lane group comprises a left and right road boundary [Rodrigues ¶ 0098 and Fig. 9B element 930].
Claim 3, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rodrigues in view of Anastassov in view of Giurgiu in view of Corte and in further view of Chen (US PGPub 2016/0167582).
With respect to claim 3: Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, and Corte teach the method of claim 1. Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, and Corte do not teach wherein the probe data generates a histogram indicating probabilities of lane boundaries across the plurality of lateral slices.
However, in a related field of invention, Chen does teach wherein the probe data generates a histogram indicating probabilities of lane boundaries across the plurality of lateral slices [Chen ¶ 0052-0053].
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention with a reasonable expectation of success to combine the road geometry representation using lateral slicing method as taught by Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, and Corte with using a histogram indicating probabilities as taught in Chen in order to show the distribution of data and reveal patterns in the data which can correlate to road lanes [Chen ¶ 0052].
With respect to claim 6: Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, and Corte teach the method of claim 1. Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, and Corte do not teach wherein the features comprise hard lane boundaries and soft lane boundaries.
However, in a related field of invention, Chen does teach wherein the features comprise hard lane boundaries and soft lane boundaries [Chen ¶ 0008].
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention with a reasonable expectation of success to combine the road geometry representation using a lateral slicing method as taught by Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, and Corte with having hard and soft lane boundary features as taught in Chen in order to analyze the road markings and provide better lane positioning for the navigation system.
With respect to claim 9: Rodrigues teaches A vehicle control system, comprising:
One or more processors [Rodrigues ¶ 0099 and Fig. 10 element 1002]; and
a memory coupled to the one or more processors to store instructions, which when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to [Rodrigues ¶ 0099 Fig. 10 element 1004]:
receive probe data of an autonomous vehicle traveling on a roadway [Rodrigues ¶ 0025 and Fig. 1 element and 120];
based on classification of each slice, generating a trajectory for the autonomous vehicle; and [Rodrigues ¶ 0051 “The shapefiles are layered in order to determine vectors for traveling along a network of roadways. The shapefiles are usable in app such as navigation systems and autonomous driving for identifying directions of travel for vehicles.”]
adjusting autonomous control of the autonomous vehicle based on the generated trajectory [Rodrigues ¶ 0051].
Rodrigues does not teach classify each slice based on the lane group.
However, in a related field of invention, Anastassov does teach classify each slice based on the lane group [Anastassov ¶ 0065 "each grid cell, the analysis module can determine summary statistics"].
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention with a reasonable expectation of success to combine the roadmap generation system where a lane network is generated based on object detection as taught by Rodrigues with determining lane groups for sections of the roadway base on shared features as taught in Anastassov in order to allow a system for mapping road lanes to accurately reconstruct the curves/ turns within an intersection.
Rodrigues and Anastassov do not teach discretize the probe data into a plurality of lateral slices of the roadway.
However, in a related field of invention, Giurigu teaches discretizing the probe data into a plurality of lateral slices of the roadway [Giurgiu ¶ 0056];
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention with a reasonable expectation of success to combine the road geometry representation method taught by Rodrigues and Anastassov with sequence of lateral slices as taught in Giurgiu in order to allow a system for mapping road lanes to process discrete, manageable chunks of data.
Rodrigues, Anastassov, and Giurigu do not teach
generating a histogram indicating probabilities of lane boundaries across the plurality of lateral slices;
group a portion of the plurality of lateral slices into a lane group based on the histogram, wherein the grouping is created based on lateral slices comprising lane transitions and lane creations in the roadway;
However, in a related field of invention, Chen does teach generating a histogram indicating probabilities of lane boundaries across the plurality of lateral slices [Chen ¶ 0052-0053];
group a portion of the plurality of lateral slices into a lane group based on the histogram, wherein the grouping is created based on lateral slices comprising lane transitions and lane creations in the roadway [Chen ¶ 0052, "the number of lanes of the road segment"; The different range bins are being interpreted as the lateral slices and then based on the histogram, the number of lanes is determined and forming a group.];
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention with a reasonable expectation of success to combine the road geometry representation using lateral slicing method as taught by Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, and Corte with using a histogram indicating probabilities as taught in Chen in order to show the distribution of data and reveal patterns in the data which can correlate to road lanes [Chen ¶ 0052].
Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurigu, and Chen do not teach wherein the lane transitions and lane creations are detected based on a changing width of one or more affected lanes within a respective lane group.
However, in a related field of invention, Corte does teach wherein the lane transitions and lane creations are detected based on a changing width of one or more affected lanes within a respective lane group [Corte ¶ 0101 "For example, the physical feature extractor 504 may determine that the first traffic lane is intersecting the second traffic lane when the distance between the boundary points defining opposite edges of the first traffic lane exceeds a threshold defined by the typical width of a traffic lane. "].
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention with a reasonable expectation of success to combine the road geometry representation method taught by Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurigu, and Chen with detecting the lane transitions and lane creations based on a changing width as taught in Corte in order to improve differentiation between different physical features present in the sensor data [Corte ¶ 0095].
With respect to claim 10: Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, Corte, and Chen teach the vehicle control system of claim 9. Anastassov further teaches wherein a CNN network groups the portion of the plurality of lateral slices into the lane group [Anastassov ¶ 0120]. The motivation above in the rejection of claim 9 applies here.
With respect to claim 11: Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, Corte, and Chen teach the vehicle control system of claim 9. Giurgiu further teaches wherein each lateral slice of the plurality of lateral slices comprises five meters of the roadway [Giurgiu ¶ 0056]. The motivation above in the rejection of claim 9 applies here.
With respect to claim 12: Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, Corte, and Chen teach the vehicle control system of claim 9. Anastassov further teaches wherein each slice of the portion of the plurality of lateral slices is classified as a start of the lane group, an interior of the lane group, or an end of the lane group [Anastassov ¶ 0070 seed points are being interpreted as the slices; There are "termination seed point and start seed point"]. The motivation above in the rejection of claim 9 applies here.
With respect to claim 13: Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, Corte, and Chen teach the vehicle control system of claim 9. Anastassov further teaches wherein the instructions further cause the one or more processors to determine that a slice of the plurality of lateral slices classifies as a transition between lane groups [Anastassov ¶ 0076 "intersection point"]. The motivation above in the rejection of claim 9 applies here.
With respect to claim 14: Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, Corte, and Chen teach the vehicle control system of claim 9. Rodrigues further teaches wherein each lane group comprises a left and right road boundary [Rodrigues ¶ 0098 and Fig. 9B element 930].
With respect to claim 17: Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, and Corte teach the non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 15. Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, and Corte do not teach wherein the probe data generates a histogram indicating probabilities of lane boundaries across the plurality of lateral slices.
However, in a related field of invention, Chen does teach wherein the probe data generates a histogram indicating probabilities of lane boundaries across the plurality of lateral slices [Chen ¶ 0052-0053].
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention with a reasonable expectation of success to combine the road geometry representation using lateral slicing method as taught by Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, and Corte with using a histogram indicating probabilities as taught in Chen in order to show the distribution of data and reveal patterns in the data which can correlate to road lanes [Chen ¶ 0052].
With respect to claim 19: Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, and Corte the non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 15. Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, and Corte do not teach wherein the features comprise hard lane boundaries and soft lane boundaries.
However, in a related field of invention, Chen does teach wherein the features comprise hard lane boundaries and soft lane boundaries [Chen ¶ 0008].
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention with a reasonable expectation of success to combine the road geometry representation using a lateral slicing method as taught by Rodrigues, Anastassov, Giurgiu, and Corte with having hard and soft lane boundary features as taught in Chen in order to analyze the road markings and provide better lane positioning for the navigation system.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JOSEPHINE RICH whose telephone number is (571)272-6384. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8-5pm.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Scott Browne can be reached at (571) 270-0151. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/J.E.R./Examiner, Art Unit 3666
/SCOTT A BROWNE/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3666
Prosecution Insights