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 .
Election/Restrictions
Applicant’s election without traverse of Group II (Claims 7-12) in the reply filed on 12 January 2026 is acknowledged. Claims 1-6 are withdrawn as they are directed to a non-elected invention.
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
This office acknowledges receipt of the following item(s) from the applicant:
Information Disclosure Statement(s) (IDS) filed on 27 December 2023. The references have been considered.
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) 7-9, 11 and 12 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wang et al. (Wang, US PGPub 2016/0245911) in view of Eljarat et al. (Eljarat, US PGPub 2019/0107615).
Referring to Claim 7, Wang teaches an interface device configured to receive any one of raw data, a tensor, or a radar point cloud of a 4D radar (Fig. 3 [0032]); a storage device ([0068]) configured to store a program that filters an outlier; and a computing device (Fig. 2 #230; [0031]) configured to remove an outlier from the radar point cloud using the program, wherein the computing device generates, when the interface device receives the raw data, a tensor containing position and Doppler information from the raw data ([0032]), and extracts a radar point cloud based on a threshold generated using a threshold setting function on the generated tensor or a tensor received by the interface device ([0036] and Fig. 5-10 and associated text), wherein the extracted radar point cloud or a radar point cloud received by the interface device consists of a plurality of points ([0058]), but does not explicitly disclose nor limit and the computing device removes the outlier on the basis of a range calculated further using Doppler information for each of at least some of the plurality of points.
However, Eljarat teaches the data processing device removes the outlier on the basis of a range calculated further using Doppler information for each of at least some of the plurality of points; See Claim 1.
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify Wang with the outlier removal as taught by Eljarat as it allows for providing highly accurate measurements of the objects velocity relative to the radar.
Referring to Claim 8, Wang as modified by Eljarat teaches wherein the threshold setting function determines the threshold on the basis of fixed threshold or constant false alarm rate (CFAR); [0036] and [0039] as well as Fig. 5-10 and associated text of Wang.
Referring to Claim 9, Wang as modified by Eljarat teaches wherein the range is calculated on the basis of position and Doppler information of each of first and second points among the some of the plurality of points, and the position is a position in a two-dimensional or three- dimensional coordinate system; See Abstract and [0032] of Wang.
Referring to Claim 11, Wang as modified by Eljarat teaches wherein the program removes the outlier using a statistical information-based filtering method or a distance information-based filtering method based on the range; [0036-0039] of Eljarat.
Referring to Claim 12, Wang as modified by Eljarat teaches wherein the program sets a first point and a second point located around the first point among the some of the plurality of points, and determines whether the first point is an outlier on the basis of a range between the first point and the second point; See filter description of Eljarat.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 10 is 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.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. US PGPub 2020/0218908 teaches relevant information on removing outliers within 4D radar point clouds, and while not being used for rejection purposes at this time it is worth review by the Applicant.
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/WHITNEY MOORE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3646