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 .
Priority
This application is based on PCT filing PCT/JP2021/021554, filed June 07, 2021.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS’s) submitted are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Interpretation
The following are examples of structural terms that have been found not to invoke 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, paragraph 6: “circuit,” “detent mechanism,” “digital detector,” “reciprocating member,” “connector assembly,” “perforation,” “sealingly connected joints,” and “eyeglass hanger member.” See Mass. Inst. of Tech., 462 F.3d at 1355-1356, 80 USPQ2d at 1332 (emphasis added).
As such, none of the claimed terms are being interpreted under 112(f).
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.
Claims 1 – 2 and 4 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being made obvious by Choi (US 20190155304 A1).
As to claims 1 and 4, Choi discloses all the features to make obvious an object detection apparatus comprising:
a radar adapted to radiate an electromagnetic wave from a vehicle and to output a reception signal by receiving a reflected wave propagated by reflection of the electromagnetic wave (Para. 69);
an object detector adapted to detect, based on the reception signal, a position and a speed of an object present in an environment in which the vehicle travels (Para. 3 (Description of Related Art) and Para. 51. Choi makes obvious that “range, angle, and/or velocity” would be necessary for autonomous driving to reduce the risk of collision thus improving safety.);
an obstacle detector adapted to detect positions of respective obstacles on opposite sides of a route along which the vehicle travels and a separation distance that is a distance between the obstacles (Para. 54 “When a field of view (FoV) for a signal emitted from the vehicle 100 is wider than a width of the tunnel, a ghost object may be created and detected in the signal reflected by the wall 110. Thus, when it is determined that the vehicle 100 is traveling in a confined space, the vehicle 100 may detect a real object in the confined space by adjusting the FoV for the emitted signal.”); and
a horizontal coverage controller adapted to perform control to reduce a coverage of the radar in a horizontal direction from a first coverage, in which the respective obstacles on the opposite sides of the route are detected, to a second coverage between the obstacles based on the positions of the respective obstacles on the opposite sides of the route and the separation distance (Para. 54 makes clear that the FOV is adjusted based on the width (separation distance) of the walls of the tunnel. Given the nature of a radar’s antenna radiation pattern, e.g., side-lobes and nulls, and incidence angles, there would be several point scatterers due to multiple reflections off the wall, thus meeting the scope of a plurality of obstacles’ detections on both respective sides of the tunnel.).
As to claim 2, Choi discloses all the features to make obvious an object detection apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the horizontal coverage controller is adapted to reduce incidence of the electromagnetic wave on the obstacles by the control to reduce the coverage (Para. 54 as made evident by the reduction of ghosts, e.g., multipath).
Claims 3 and 5 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being made obvious over Choi in view of Sakamoto (US 20120035846 A1).
As to claims 3 and 5, Cho discloses all the features to make obvious the object detection apparatus according to claim 1 further comprising:
a first object detector that is the object detector (the radar as cited.);
a second object detector adapted to recognize an object included in an image captured by imaging from the vehicle (As broadly worded, Choi’s teachings of “and/or a Lidar” meets the scope of this limitation in so far as the claimed word “recognize” is broadly interpreted to be detect. Nonetheless, the secondary reference more explicitly teaches this limitation.);
Choi neither discloses nor teaches an identification determiner: adapted to determine whether the object whose position and speed have been detected by the first object detector is identical to the object recognized by the second object detector; and adapted to associate a result of recognizing the object by the second object detector with a result of detecting the position and the speed by the first object detector.
In the same field of endeavor, Sakamoto teaches “the fusion means 107 generates the fusion information in consideration of the number of detection of the pedestrian in the pattern matching according to the image processing by the pedestrian determination means 106. This allows an object misdetected in the pattern matching according to the image processing to be excluded. As shown in the above Expressions (30) to (34), the fusion information is generated by adopting the radar information as the position and the velocity in the longitudinal direction and adopting the camera information as the position and the velocity in the lateral direction, thereby allowing improvement in accuracy of recognizing the pedestrian to be facilitated (Para. 154).”
In view of the teachings of Sakamoto, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before filing to include a camera for fusing with the radar to allow for matching of object to ensure that each object is being correctly identified and exclude objects that are not correctly identified thereby improving accuracy.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MICHAEL W JUSTICE whose telephone number is (571)270-7029. The examiner can normally be reached 7:30 - 5:30 M-F.
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/MICHAEL W JUSTICE/Examiner, Art Unit 3648