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 .
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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 1-10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over LIN et al (2021/0027532) in view of VIANELLO et al (2024/0265630) and AL-OBAIDI et al (Design and performance of a novel innovative roofing system for tropical landed houses).
As per claim 1, Lin teaches the claimed “method for modeling a roof in a geographical area for solar installation,” the method comprising: “receiving, at a processor, a first set of data packets pertaining to a pre-defined area of a region of interest (ROI), wherein the pre-defined area is selected by an entity by an input device” (Lin, [0036] - The building footprint 1603 is decomposed into a set of shapes, each shape is classified, a roof type on each building is classified, and finally the classified detailed shapes and roofs are fit to the received data set 1602); “receiving, at the processor, a second set of data packets pertaining to one or more obstructions in the pre-defined area of the ROI, wherein the one or more obstructions are selected by the entity by the input device” (Lin, [0047] - Two non-exhaustive examples of specific building designs include a step pyramid design 402 and wings in the structure that are not necessarily set at 90 degree angles from the adjacent section of the building 502, as shown in FIG. 4 and FIG. 5, respectively. Step pyramids may be randomly generated with different sizes, different number of layers, different shapes for the top layer and different roof types; [0049] - With a second scale, primitive models and rooftop structures, such as air handlers and vents, are stacked. With the second scale, building sections that do have children layers are attributed with additional primitives representing rooftop structures. FIG. 6 shows the stacking of primitives 602 to form more complicated building structures 604); “generating, by the processor, a digital surface model (DSM) of the pre-defined area and the one or more obstructions selected by the entity; obtaining, by the processor, DSM data of the pre-defined area and the one or more obstructions selected by the entity” (Lin, [0077] - Initially at 51510, a region of interest is received at the system 1600. Then at 51512, a 2D image 1603 of the received ROI is received from a data source 1602. The Digital Surface Model (DSM) 1603 is a dense 2.5D representation of heights, where each xy cell contains the z-height above the geoid model (or any height reference). The 3D building modeling module 1601 generates a Digital Terrain Map (DTM), which is a 2.5D representation of terrain based on the received image 1603 in S1514. In embodiments, the surface model (DSM) (which may also be a point-cloud) is received and the terrain is separated from the manmade structures. The DSM or pointcloud represents the complete surface; [0080] - the output of the 3D building modeling module 1601 may be output to a user platform 1620 (a control system, a desktop computer, a laptop computer, a personal digital assistant, a tablet, a smartphone, etc.) to view information about the buildings in a ROI); “parsing, at the processor, the obtained DSM data, and correspondingly delivering a raster image and associated metadata” (Lin, [0037] - The surface model is typical a dense 2.5D (2D xy grid—where each cell is the z height value) or 3D point cloud (where each piece of data is an xyz location+meta data (color, intensity, feature name, etc.)); “creating, at the processor, a 3D mesh of a roof from the received raster image and the associated metadata” (LIN, [0077] - The primitive fitting module 1615 applies a primitive and classification process to each section to output a 3D representation of the shape (vertices and faces) that represents each shape of the building in the complete reconstructed mesh (sparse). The extrusion fitting 1616 outputs a mesh model that is a contour of the shape (that may be simplified using the Douglas Pucker algorithm, while still providing a good approximation of the contour.) After the fitting processes (1615 and 1616), a 3D representation of the shape (vertices and faces) that represent each shape of the building in the complete reconstructed mesh (sparse) is available, where each piece may have been from the box, primitive or extruded shape); and “receiving, one or more parameters from the entity, and correspondingly creating and updating one or more roof models, and wherein corresponding to the one or more roof models, rendering, on a graphical user interface (GUI)” (Lin, [0079] - Platform 1619 provides any suitable interfaces through which users/other systems 1624 may communicate with the modules). It is noted that Lin does not explicitly teach “a visualization indicative of a plurality of solar panels over the pre-defined area” as claimed. However, Lin’s rooftop structure (e.g., [0049] - With a second scale, primitive models and rooftop structures, such as air handlers and vents, are stacked. With the second scale, building sections that do have children layers are attributed with additional primitives representing rooftop structures. FIG. 6 shows the stacking of primitives 602 to form more complicated building structures 604) suggests any well-known rooftop structure can be placed on the roof, such as “solar panels” (see also Vianello, [0028] - Property components can include: built structures (e.g., primary structure, accessory structure, deck, pool, tennis court, etc.); subcomponents of the built structures (e.g., roof, siding, framing, flooring, living space, bedrooms, bathrooms, garages, parking lots, foundation, HVAC systems, solar panels, slides, diving board, etc.); Al-Obaidi, Figure 14 - Schematic of the field study measurement set-up; (a) sectional view (internal condition) and (b) plan view of the test bed and measuring points… 5= Solar panel and HTV). Thus, it would have been obvious, in view of Vianello and Al-Obaidi, to configure Lin’s method as claimed by placing “solar panels” on rooftop as claimed. The motivation is to provide a property of the house whose roof includes a solar power supplier.
Claim 2 adds into claim 1 “wherein the one or more parameters comprise any or a combination of core height, parapet height, tilt, and azimuth” (Lin, [0039] - For example, if you have a hanger style roof (curve)—but end up carving out a space in xyz—that is too shallow in z, and you might think the top piece is a gable—sitting on top of one or more boxes representing the tapered vertical walls. To address this, embodiments take a multiple hypothesis approach 208 in carving out the volume (starting with an initial flat roof model 207)—by explicitly manipulating the z (and dependent xy)—to attempt different partitioning schemes—and then determining which representations best match the building structure; [0040] - As a non-exhaustive example, some embodiments may recognize a number of points in the data as representing a roof gable. The points/pixels may be replaced with a primitive and ultimately a shape model 1802 that represents that gabled shape, having a height, a slope, a length, and a width. For example, FIG. 18 shows a hip roof point distribution model at various normalized shape parameter values and points on the surface of the model. Replacing the pixels with a primitive shape may provide a better/more compact representation of the data).
Claim 3 adds into claim 1 “wherein color coding in the 3D mesh based on height of each point” which Lin suggests in the height map in which each height dimension can be color coded (it is a common knowledge that in digital representation, color code is used to indicate the value of the pixel component) as represented by a color on display (Lin, [0040] - Once the buildings have been identified, this information may be used with a stereo map and height map for the buildings to generate a primitive model. The height map may be a pixel-based representation 102 (FIG. 1), and in some embodiments, the decomposition module 1606 may recognize more complex shapes in the height map 1605 and replace a portion of the height map with the recognized shapes via a decomposition process. The identification and replacement steps are iterative until the buildings and other man-made structures from the height map 102 are represented by a collection of geometric primitives 104 (FIG. 1)). The motivation to use a heat map is to enhance the visualization of heights on the rooftop through the colors.
Claim 4 adds into claim 1 “wherein the DSM data is received in tag image file format (TIFF)” which would have been obvious based on Lin’s graphic file format (it is a common knowledge that TIFF (Tag Image File Format) is a high-quality, versatile raster image file format for storing images with high resolution and detail) (Lin, [0039] - It is noted that while the 3D model may be in a PLY format, which is a particular file format for 3D models, other file formats (e.g., STL, OBJ, FBX, STEP, COLLADA, etc.) may be used).
Claim 5 adds into claim 1 “wherein the one or more roof models are used for heat map generation and enabling the entity to identify the roof and the one or more obstructions” ” which Lin suggests in the height map in which each height dimension can be color coded (it is a common knowledge that in digital representation, heat map (or heatmap) is a 2-dimensional data visualization technique that represents the magnitude of individual values within a dataset as a color) as represented by a color on display (Lin, [0040] - Once the buildings have been identified, this information may be used with a stereo map and height map for the buildings to generate a primitive model. The height map may be a pixel-based representation 102 (FIG. 1), and in some embodiments, the decomposition module 1606 may recognize more complex shapes in the height map 1605 and replace a portion of the height map with the recognized shapes via a decomposition process. The identification and replacement steps are iterative until the buildings and other man-made structures from the height map 102 are represented by a collection of geometric primitives 104 (FIG. 1)). The motivation to use a heat map is to enhance the visualization of heights on the rooftop through the colors.
Claim 6 adds into claim 1 “wherein the one or more obstructions comprise any or combination of skylight, pole, chimney, vent, and tree in proximity of the roof” (Lin, [0047] - Two non-exhaustive examples of specific building designs include a step pyramid design 402 and wings in the structure that are not necessarily set at 90 degree angles from the adjacent section of the building 502, as shown in FIG. 4 and FIG. 5, respectively. Step pyramids may be randomly generated with different sizes, different number of layers, different shapes for the top layer and different roof types; [0049] - With a second scale, primitive models and rooftop structures, such as air handlers and vents, are stacked. With the second scale, building sections that do have children layers are attributed with additional primitives representing rooftop structures. FIG. 6 shows the stacking of primitives 602 to form more complicated building structures 604).
Claims 7-10 claim a system based on the method of claims 1-6; therefore, they are rejected under a similar rationale.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to PHU K NGUYEN whose telephone number is (571)272-7645. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8-5pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Daniel F. Hajnik can be reached at (571) 272-7642. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/PHU K NGUYEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2616