Prosecution Insights
Last updated: August 18, 2026
Application No. 18/618,974

MULTI-SUBJECT MULTI-CAMERA TRACKING FOR HIGH-DENSITY ENVIRONMENTS

Final Rejection §103
Filed
Mar 27, 2024
Priority
Sep 19, 2023 — provisional 63/539,325
Examiner
GARCIA, SANTIAGO
Art Unit
2673
Tech Center
2600 — Communications
Assignee
NVIDIA Corporation
OA Round
2 (Final)
88%
Grant Probability
Favorable
3-4
OA Rounds
0m
Est. Remaining
99%
With Interview

Examiner Intelligence

Grants 88% — above average
88%
Career Allowance Rate
901 granted / 1024 resolved
+26.0% vs TC avg
Moderate +13% lift
Without
With
+13.4%
Interview Lift
resolved cases with interview
Typical timeline
2y 3m
Avg Prosecution
22 currently pending
Career history
1041
Total Applications
across all art units

Statute-Specific Performance

§101
8.0%
-32.0% vs TC avg
§103
63.0%
+23.0% vs TC avg
§102
17.3%
-22.7% vs TC avg
§112
1.6%
-38.4% vs TC avg
Black line = Tech Center average estimate • Based on career data from 1024 resolved cases

Office Action

§103
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 . Response to Arguments Applicant's arguments filed 05/05/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. The amended portions of the current claims are rejected were found in Bansal (US 12,382,179) as even though the subject matter was taken from claim 2, only part of this subject matter was brought up. 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. Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Terekhov (US 2018/0218515) in view of Bansal (US 12,382,179). As per claims 1, 15, and 20 Terekhov teaches, one or more processors and system and method comprising processing circuitry to: cluster a plurality of representations corresponding to a behavior of one or more subjects within an environment based on streaming data corresponding to a first time frame to generate one or more clusters based at least on a similarity between representations of the plurality of representations (Terekhov, ¶[0036] “ a human that is classified as belonging to a specific category; a human plus a specific kind of object; a human plus a specific kind of environment; a group of humans; a group of humans identified or named; a group of humans classified as belonging to a specific category; a group of human beings plus a specific kind of object; a group of human beings plus a specific kind of environment; any relationship between one or more humans, or parts of humans, and one or more objects; any relationship between one or more humans, or parts of humans, and one or more environments; any object which is linked to another object.” By classifying this represents a similarity between representations of the plurality of representations and ¶[0131] “An event is a set of data, which may represent the activity of a track, group or detection for a specific moment in time or specific time period or specific set of time frames.” represents corresponding to a time frame and ¶[0056] complex events describe, classify or infer a person's behavior or intent or needs” This represents representations corresponding to a behavior), wherein the streaming data includes behavior data of one or more subjects within the environment generated using a plurality of optical sensors (Terekhov, ¶[0073] “the computer vision process is implemented by a computer vision engine localized in a sensor or SoC or GPU. [0074] the computer vision process is implemented by a computer vision engine localized in a camera or other device including a sensor, or in a hub or gateway connected to that device, or in a remote server, or distributed across any permutation of these. [0075] the computer vision process is implemented by a computer vision engine that is localized in one or more of the following: (a) an edge layer that processes raw sensor data;” This represents the environment generated using a plurality of optical sensors since there is vision in these sensors therefore optical and ¶ [0107] “A method is provided for analyzing a captured image from a scene from one or several image sensors”); determine, based at least on trajectory tracking data for the one or more subjects, whether individual clusters of the one or more clusters are associated with a respective prior behavior state of one or more first behavior states (Terekhov, ¶[0019]-[0031]” if the trajectory or pose of several humans, as defined in a track record for each human, is sufficiently similar, then a track record for a group consisting of those humans, is automatically created” the track record automatically created represents a prior behavior by keeping a record of such behavior); assign one or more second behavior states to the one or more clusters based on at least one of the individual clusters of the one or more clusters not having an associated behavior state from the one or more first behavior states (Terekhov, ¶[0034]- [0040] “an event is created when a new track record is made [0041] an event is created when a new track record is made for a higher-level object because one or more track records for lower level objects are created” by creating a new track record); and update at least one of the one or more first behavior states or the one or more second behavior states based on the plurality of representations to generate updated behavior states (Terekhov, ¶[0040] “an event is created when a new track record is made” this represents updating the new behavior, and this new behavior then gets recorded). Terekhov doesn’t clearly teach, wherein the streaming data includes behavior data of one or more subjects within the environment generated using a plurality of optical sensors, wherein at least one cluster of the one or more clusters comprises representations associated with at least two optical sensors of the plurality of optical sensors and apply, based at least on one or more first clusters of the one or more clusters not having an associated behavior state of the one or more first behavior states, a matching algorithm to the one or more clusters to assign one or more second behavior states to the one or more clusters. However, Bansal teaches, wherein the streaming data includes behavior data of one or more subjects within the environment generated using a plurality of optical sensors (Bansal, fig.1C 120A-B optical sensors, and the subjects being 180), wherein at least one cluster of the one or more clusters comprises representations associated with at least two optical sensors of the plurality of optical sensors and apply (Bansal, (21) “Locating data (or tracking data) 185 regarding the actor 180 is provided to each of the cameras 120A, 120B by the system 112. The locating data 185 may include, but need not be limited to, an identifier of the actor 180, or one or more visual descriptors of pixels depicting the actor 180, including but not limited to appearance features of the actor 180, e.g., sets of information or data identifying colors, textures, shapes or other aspects of features of the actor 180, as well as a record of the positions of an actor at various times beginning at an initial detection and following with subsequent detections by one or more sensors.” Fig. 1C showing the two optical sensors 120A, 120B, the different clusters are the features and or colors for example), based at least on one or more first clusters of the one or more clusters not having an associated behavior state of the one or more first behavior states (Bansal, fig.1C one movement and positions one or more clusters not having an associated behavior state which day the shapes and textures or colors for example ), a matching algorithm to the one or more clusters to assign one or more second behavior states to the one or more clusters (Bansal, “(22) Each of the cameras 120A, 120B is configured to capture images at a constant frame rate, and to process such images to determine whether any of such images depict one or more body parts of an actor, e.g., a customer, a worker or another human. As the actor 180 executes the one or more poses, gestures or other actions within the fields of view of the cameras 120A, 120B, images captured by the cameras 120A, 120B are processed to detect any body parts of the actor 180 that are depicted within such images, and to determine positions of such body parts in 3D space. In some implementations, each of the cameras 120A, 120B may be configured to execute one or more machine learning models, e.g., a deep neural network, a convolutional neural network or a support vector machine operating thereon, to detect body parts or positions thereof.” This would be the matching algorithm to the one or more clusters to assign one or more second behavior states to the one or more clusters, to be able to tell these positions). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention was made to combine the teachings of Terekhov with those of Bansal to stream the behavior and have two separate clusters of behaviors that are different from one another. The motivation would have been to improve detecting at faster speeds for processing as taught by Bansal in the background of the invention. As per claim 2, Terekhov in view of Bansal teaches, the one or more processors of claim 1, wherein the one or more second behavior states are assigned to the one or more clusters using a matching algorithm, and wherein the processing circuitry is further to: initialize a new behavior state for at least one cluster of the one or more clusters based on the at least one cluster not being assigned to at least one of the one or more second behavior states by the matching algorithm (Terekhov, ¶[0107] “ A detection algorithm is applied to the image in order to detect one or several objects and/or one or several object features. A grouping algorithm is then applied in order to group the one or several detections (or ‘detects’) into a group or a cluster. A tracking algorithm is then used to track the detections or group of detections and to generate one or several ‘Track Records’, wherein a ‘Track Record’ (TR) represents one or several events based on the behavior of the detections or group of detections.” This represents second behavior states are assigned to the one or more clusters using a matching algorithm, and wherein the processing circuitry is further to: initialize a new behavior state for at least one cluster of the one or more clusters based on the at least one cluster not being assigned to at least one of the one or more second behavior states by the matching algorithm, as when there is a new behavior or feature this new record gets recorded with algorithm). As per claim 3, Terekhov in view of Bansal teaches, the one or more processors of claim 1, wherein the behavior data comprises at one or both of appearance data and spatiotemporal data represented by the plurality of representations (Terekhov, ¶ [0114] “One or more of the following may be recorded within a TR: trajectory, acceleration, pose, gesture, appearance, disappearance, and identity.” Data of appearance data). As per claim 4, Terekhov in view of Bansal teaches, the one or more processors of claim 1, wherein the processing circuitry is further to: generate the plurality of representations based on processing individual data feeds from at least one individual sensor of the plurality of optical sensors (Terekhov, ¶[0167] “The image sensor module may receive a video stream and analyses the video on a frame-by-frame basis, and may subsequently continuously create events that can then be pushed into other smart or connected devices as specific commands.” This would be an individual feed, as seen in fig.1). As per claims 5 and 16, Terekhov in view of Bansal teaches, the one or more processors of claim 1, wherein the processing circuitry is further to: generate the plurality of representations using a machine learning model trained to detect one or more characteristics representing the one or more subjects based on the streaming data (Terekhov, ¶ [004] “Other techniques are based on machine learning techniques such as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN). However, such techniques involve training a system with a large number of examples based on the objects that the system needs to analyses.” This represents generate the plurality of representations using a machine learning model trained to detect one or more characteristics representing the one or more subjects based on the streaming data provided by the sensors). As per claim 6, Terekhov in view of Bansal teaches, the one or more processors of claim 1, wherein the streaming data comprises synchronized optical image streaming data that includes individual image feeds from the plurality of optical sensors, wherein at least two optical sensors of the plurality of optical sensors are synchronized to capture the individual image feeds at the same time (Terekhov, ¶ [0118] “One or several image sensors may be used to survey a scene. The sensors may include one or more of the following sensors: sensors operating in the visible spectra, sensors operating in infra-red spectra, thermal sensors, ultra sonic sensors, sensors operating in non-visible spectra and sensors for acceleration or movement detection.” several of the sensors listed in paragraph [0118] are considered optical sensors, as they operate by detecting light or electromagnetic radiation within or near the visible spectrum, and each of these sensors would individually stream). As per claim 7, Terekhov teaches, the one or more processors of claim 1, wherein the processing circuitry is further to: map the plurality of representations to a global image coordinate system based at least on camera calibration parameters associated with the plurality of optical sensors ( Terekhov, ¶[0171] “Evacuation systems: by understanding precisely locations and people's presence,” This represents a global image coordinate by having the precisely locations). As per claim 8, Terekhov in view of Bansal teaches, the one or more processors of claim 1, wherein the plurality of representations individually represent one or both of appearance data and spatiotemporal data for a respective subject of the one or more subjects (Terekhov, ¶ [0114] “One or more of the following may be recorded within a TR: trajectory, acceleration, pose, gesture, appearance, disappearance, and identity.” Data of appearance data). As per claim 9, Terekhov in view of Bansal teaches, the one or more processors of claim 1, wherein the processing circuitry is further to: associate individual behavior states from at least one of the one or more first behavior states or the one or more second behavior states with a global identifier (ID) (Terekhov, ¶[0067] “the computer vision process is used to monitor the behavior of one or more persons” individual behaviors get monitored). As per claims 10 and 17, Terekhov in view of Bansal teaches, the one or more processors of claim 1, wherein the processing circuitry is further to cluster the plurality of representations based on a hierarchical clustering process that performs operations to: determine a subject prediction number based on a first clustering process that clusters the plurality of representations based at least on a similarity of representations from the plurality of representations; and apply, to the plurality of representations, a second clustering process that is constrained to cluster the plurality of representations based at least on the subject prediction number (Terekhov, ¶[0146] “. A procedure may be used to predict an area for the hand position with a high probability. From the knowledge that a human body has a limited number of angles of freedom, by drawing lines and angles near the joints of the human body, it is possible to predict the shape, size and area for the hand positions. The right hand position is therefore predicted by drawing the lines 1204 and 1205, whereas the left hand is predicted by drawing the lines 1206 and 1207. Some corrections when drawing the lines may be needed. The shape of an area may be determined by either tracing a curve, circle, or eclipse using the trajectory of the hand, or by using a circle sector area or an ellipse sector area.” This represents the prediction number by predicting an area for the hand position with a high probability for example). As per claims 11 and 18, Terekhov in view of Bansal teaches, the one or more processors of claim 2, wherein the matching algorithm comprises at least one of: an iterative matching combinatorial optimization algorithm; an algorithm that solves an assignment problem by matching agents to tasks; a Hungarian matching algorithm; a Kuhn-Munkres algorithm; or a Munkres assignment algorithm (Terekhov, ¶[0107] “ A detection algorithm is applied to the image in order to detect one or several objects and/or one or several object features” This is equivalent to “an iterative matching combinatorial optimization algorithm” ). As per claim 12, Terekhov in view of Bansal teaches, the one or more processors of claim 1, wherein the processing circuitry is further to apply a linear programming algorithm to implement overlapping behavior suppression to avoid associating multiple clusters of the one or more clusters with more than one of the one or more subjects (Terekhov, ¶[0107] “A grouping algorithm is then applied in order to group the one or several detections (or ‘detects’) into a group or a cluster.” This represents to apply a linear programming algorithm to implement overlapping). As per claim 13, Terekhov in view of Bansal teaches, the one or more processors of claim 1, wherein the processing circuitry is further to cause a display of a computer vision-based view of the one or more subjects for at least a portion of the environment based at least on the updated behavior states (Terekhov, ¶[0071] “the computer vision process outputs no video or still images for display on a monitor or screen and from which an individual can be identified. “ ). As per claims 14 and 19, Terekhov in view of Bansal teaches, the one or more processors of claim 1, wherein the one or more processors are comprised in at least one of: a control system for an autonomous or semi-autonomous machine; a perception system for an autonomous or semi-autonomous machine; a system for performing simulation operations; a system for performing digital twin operations; a system for performing light transport simulation; a system for performing collaborative content creation for three-dimensional assets; a system for performing deep learning operations; a system for performing remote operations; a system for performing real-time streaming; a system for generating or presenting one or more of augmented reality content, virtual reality content, or mixed reality content; a system implemented using an edge device; a system implemented using a robot; a system for performing conversational AI operations; a system implementing one or more language models; a system implementing one or more large language models (LLMs); a system for generating synthetic data; a system for generating synthetic data using AI; a system incorporating one or more virtual machines (VMs); a system implemented at least partially in a data center; or a system implemented at least partially using cloud computing resources (Terekhov, ¶[003] “The ability to understand people's presence and behaviors offers a plethora of applications in a wide range of domain such as in home automation” this a control system for an autonomous or semi-autonomous machine by controlling the home automation as applicant discloses “at least one of”). Conclusion Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a). A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SANTIAGO GARCIA whose telephone number is (571)270-5182. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 9:30am-5:30pm. 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, Chineyere Wills-Burns can be reached at (571) 272-9752. 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. /SANTIAGO GARCIA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2673 /SG/
Read full office action

Prosecution Timeline

Mar 27, 2024
Application Filed
Feb 05, 2026
Non-Final Rejection mailed — §103
May 05, 2026
Response Filed
May 26, 2026
Final Rejection mailed — §103
Aug 13, 2026
Interview Requested

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Prosecution Projections

3-4
Expected OA Rounds
88%
Grant Probability
99%
With Interview (+13.4%)
2y 3m (~0m remaining)
Median Time to Grant
Moderate
PTA Risk
Based on 1024 resolved cases by this examiner. Grant probability derived from career allowance rate.

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