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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after allowance or after an Office action under Ex Parte Quayle, 25 USPQ 74, 453 O.G. 213 (Comm'r Pat. 1935). Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, prosecution in this application has been reopened pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on September 1, 2026 has been entered.
Response to Amendment
This correspondence is in response to amendments filed on September 1, 2026. Claims 1-11, 14, 16-19, and 25-45 are filed as previously or originally presented. Claims 12-13, 15, and 20-24 are cancelled. Claims 42-45 are new.
Response to Arguments
Applicant alleges support for the new claim limitations. Examiner ascertains that although some support is disclosed for parts of the presented limitations, there are some nuances to the presented claims and specific language which is not supported by Applicant’s specification. As such, associated 112(a) rejections are provided below.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112:
The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention.
Claims 42-45 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention.
Claim 42 recites the limitation “wherein the autonomous object is a simulated model of a robot”. While Paragraphs [0123-0125] of the pre-grant publication discloses information regarding simulators for reinforcement learning algorithms to learn a control policy for a robot, there is no such disclosure which determines that the autonomous object is a simulated model of a robot. Therefore, there is no supporting subject matter disclosed in Applicant’s specification for such a limitation.
Claims 43-45 are rejected for having similar limitations.
Claim 43 further recites the limitation “wherein the generalized acceleration of the autonomous object is used as a state transition output of the simulator to learn a control policy for the robot”. Paragraph [0123] of the pre-grant publication discloses the state transition function is to be replaced with the time-stepping function of Fig. 2 in the simulator for reinforcement learning training. However, Fig. 2 merely discloses the output of the function to be the end-of-step generalized position and generalized velocity. Therefore, no generalized acceleration is used as a state transition output of the simulator. As such, this limitation is not supported by Applicant’s disclosure.
Claim 45 is rejected for having a similar limitation.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-11, 14, 16-19, 25-41 are allowed.
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance:
Claims 1 and 25 require “…wherein the computing the tangential generalized reaction impulse
r
t
further includes applying the following constraints to an objective function minimizing energy over the interval
h
:
(a) associating each contact in the set of contacts with a friction cone in a space of generalized impulses to define a set of friction cones;
(b) summing one term from each friction cone in the set of friction cones, minus the normal generalized reaction impulse
r
n
; and
(c) constraining the tangential generalized reaction impulse
r
t
to be orthogonal to the normal generalized reaction impulse
r
n
and to have a non-positive inner product with the normal direction of each contact in the set of contacts…”.
Claims 14 and 36 requires “…wherein the computing the tangential generalized reaction force
R
t
further comprises applying the following constraints to an objective function maximizing power dissipated by friction:
(a) associating each contact in the set of contacts with a friction cone in a space of generalized impulses to define a set of friction cones;
(b) summing one term from each friction cone in the set of friction cones, minus the normal generalized reaction force
R
n
; and
(c) constraining the tangential generalized reaction force
R
t
to be orthogonal to the normal generalized reaction force
R
n
and to have a non-positive inner product with the normal direction of each contact in the set of contacts…”.
Examiner could not find any reference or combination of references which would teach these limitations. In the closest art of record, Torodov (“A convex, smooth and invertible contact model for trajectory optimization”, 2011) teaches a method for computing velocities while minimizing energy requirements. More specifically, Equation 9 represents a friction cone constraint with respect to impulse reactions. However, the tangential impulse is considered as a constraint which is not contributed to the summing of friction cone terms minus the normal generalized reaction impulse. Instead, through this constraint, the tangential generalized reaction impulse components are subtracted, and the friction coefficient associated with the contact is multiplied by the normal generalized reaction impulse. Thus, Torodov does not explicitly teach computing a generalized reaction impulse by applying a summation of one term of each friction cone minus the normal generalized reaction impulse.
Similarly, Anitescu et al. (“Formulating Dynamic Multi-Rigid-Body Contact Problems with Friction as Solvable Linear Complementary Problems”, 1997) teaches a maximum power dissipation over a set of contacts, but does not lead one of ordinary skill in the art to the conclusion that a tangential generalized reaction force/impulse is determined based on such a maximum dissipation, much less a summing of a term of each friction cone minus the normal generalized reaction force/impulse. The output of this formulation additionally does not conclude an acceleration value for the system.
Examiner found other relevant art such as Caron et al. (“Stability of Surface Contacts for Humanoid Robots: Closed-Form Formulae of the Contact Wrench Cone for Rectangular Support Areas”, 2015), Park et al. (“Geometric Algorithms for Robot Dynamics: A Tutorial Review”, 2018), and Tassa et al. (“Synthesis and Stabilization of Complex Behaviors through Online Trajectory Optimization”, 2012). However, none of these or other attached references overcome the deficits of Torodov or Anitescu in that Examiner did not ascertain any pertinent teaching which would indicate a tangential generalized reaction force/impulse resulting from a sum of a term of a friction cone minus the normal generalized reaction force/impulse.
As such, claims 1, 14, 25, and 36 are considered allowable over the prior art.
Claims 2-11, 16-19, 26-35, and 37-41 are allowable as being dependent on claims 1, 14, 25, and 36 respectively.
Claims 42-45 would be allowable if amended to provide adequate support to obviate the rejections under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, set forth in this Office action and to include all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Any comments considered necessary by applicant must be submitted no later than the payment of the issue fee and, to avoid processing delays, should preferably accompany the issue fee. Such submissions should be clearly labeled “Comments on Statement of Reasons for Allowance.”
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SIDNEY L MOLNAR whose telephone number is (571)272-2276. The examiner can normally be reached 9 A.M. to 4 P.M. EST Monday-Friday.
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/S.L.M./Examiner, Art Unit 3656
/WADE MILES/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3656
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