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 .
DETAILED ACTION
This communication is a non-Final office action on merit. Claims 1-30, after amendment, are presently pending. Claims 1-2, 4-6, 9, 11-15, 19, 21-27, 29, after restriction election have been considered below.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 7/16/2025 and 10/28/2025 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Restriction Election
In light of applicant’s amendment, the species is as follows:
Claims 3, 20, and 28, drawn to transformation comprising various application comprising blurring, masking, inpainting, diffusion, and/or compression, classified in G06V 10/267, G06T 2207/10012, G06T 2207/30261;
Claims 7-8, 16-17, and 30, drawn to attack detection approach and associated warning, classified in G06V 20/58, G05D 1/0088;
Claims 10 and 18, drawn to various forms of transformer outputs, classified in G06F 2221/034, G06V 10/768;
Claims 11-13, and 24-26, drawn to determining/applying candidate bounding regions per perception task of object detection or performance requirement, classified in G06F 21/554, G06V 10/22, G06V 10/764, G06T 7/11.
Currently, claims 1-2, 4-6, 9, 14-15, 19, 21-24, 27, and 29 are generic.
Applicant has elected Species III for further examination, with traverse, concerning search burden for various species. Search burden for different species has been identified in respective classifications above.
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 of this title, 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.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or
nonobviousness.
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 1-2, 4-6, 9, 11-15, 19, 21-27, 29 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 2025/0014186 A1, CHEN et al. (hereinafter CHEN) in view of US 2020/0410291 A1, Kriegman et al. (hereinafter Kriegman).
As to claim 1, Chen discloses an apparatus for object detection, the apparatus comprising:
a memory; and a processor coupled to the memory and configured to:
apply a transformation to an image of a scene to generate a transformed image (pars 0034, 0038, one or more transformed images being generated by images transformation);
determine, using an object detection model, a plurality of candidate bounding regions for the transformed image, wherein each candidate bounding region of the plurality of candidate bounding regions is associated with an object in the scene (Figs 1-3; pars 0003, 0053-0057, non-maximum suppression algorithm/model being used to determine candidate bounding regions corresponding to the same object instance);
determine a subset of candidate bounding regions for the transformed image by removing, using a non-max suppression model, at least one candidate bounding region of the plurality of candidate bounding regions (pars 0055-0057, removing one or more duplicated or noisy candidate bounding regions using a non-max suppression);
generate an output bounding box for the object based on the subset of candidate bounding regions; and output the output bounding box (Figs 8-9; pars 0032, 0053, 0056, 0058, output comprises bounding boxes, bounding shapes identifying the locations, sizes, and/r orientations of the detected objects).
Although Chen discloses above functions and features in more than embodiment, consider Chen’s teachings as a whole, it would have been obvious to one of skill in the art before the filing date of invention to incorporate Chen’s teachings in different embodiments to provide predictable object detection results.
As to claim 2, Chen discloses the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the processor is configured to obtain, by an image sensor, the image of the scene (Figs 1, 9; pars 0024, 0030-0036, capturing image of scene by a camera).
3. (Withdrawn)
As to claim 4, Chen discloses the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the processor is configured to determine, based on a context of the scene, the transformation to apply to the image (pars 0023-0024, 0033-0034, 0036-0039, 0082, image transformation (stich, fusion etc.) may be performed based on objects, environment, HSL (hu, saturation, lightness), or B (hue, saturation, brightness)).
As to claim 5, Chen discloses the apparatus of claim 4, wherein the context of the scene is based on at least one of luminance of the image, brightness of the image (par 0082, brightness), or a type of environment of the scene (pars 0023-0024, 0033, 0037, types of sensors, vehicles, objects, etc.).
As to claim 6, Chen discloses the apparatus of claim 5, wherein the type of environment of the scene is one of a highway environment or an urban environment (pars 0002, 0039, 0069, a highway environment).
7-8. (Withdrawn)
As to claim 9, Chen discloses the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the processor is configured to use an output of an image processing operation on the image to reduce a number of the plurality of candidate bounding regions (pars 0039, 0109, smaller size of windows/bounding boxes; pars 0055-0057, removing some bounding regions (smaller number of bounding regions).
10. (Withdrawn)
As to claim 11, Chen discloses the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the processor is configured to determine whether to apply at least one of a threshold number of candidate bounding regions or an output of image processing operation on the image based on at least one of a perception task for detecting the object or a performance requirement (pars 0006, 0030, 0056, 0061, 0065, 0067-0069, 0159, number of candidate bounding regions being utilized or applied being determined based on detection confidence set by a threshold value for object detection tasks including tasks nature of perception).
As to claim 12, Chen discloses the apparatus of claim 11, wherein the perception task comprises detecting objects on a road within an environment of the scene for an autonomous driving application (pars 0006, 0023, 0030, 0067-0068, 0076, detecting obstacles/objects on the road in an autonomous driving application).
As to claim 13, Chen discloses the apparatus of claim 12, wherein the performance requirement comprises a latency requirement (pars 0078, 0154, 0156-0158, 0173, the tasks involve computer vision, real time data processing motion estimation on-the-fly, and autonomous driving applications where processing latency is critical including latency requirement for SRAM).
As to claim 14, Chen discloses an apparatus for object detection, the apparatus comprising: a memory; and a processor coupled to the memory and configured to: determine, using an object detection model, a plurality of candidate bounding regions within an image of a scene, wherein each candidate bounding region of the plurality of candidate bounding regions is associated with an object in the scene (see rejection in claim 1); generate a subset of candidate bounding regions by reducing, based on an output of an image processing operation on the image, a number of the plurality of candidate bounding regions (Figs 1-3; pars 0003, 0053-0057, non-maximum suppression algorithm/model being used to determine and generate candidate bounding regions corresponding to the same object instance); generate an output bounding box for the object by removing, using a non-max suppression model, at least one candidate bounding region of the subset of candidate bounding regions (Figs 1-3; pars 0003, 0053-0057, removing one or more duplicated or noisy candidate bounding regions using a non-max suppression); and output an object detection output including the output bounding box (see rejection in claim 1). See motivation statement in claim 1.
As to claim 15, it is rejected with the same reason as set forth in claim 3.
16-18. (Withdrawn)
As to claim 19, Chen discloses the apparatus of claim 14, wherein the processor is configured to apply a transformation to the image of the scene (pars 0034, 0038, one or more transformed images being generated by images transformation).
20. (Withdrawn)
As to claims 21-23, they are rejected with the same reason as set forth in claims 4-6, respectively.
As to claim 24, it is rejected with the same reason as set forth in claims 4-6.
As to claim 25-26, they are rejected with the same reason as set forth in claims 12-13, respectively.
As to claim 27, it is a method claim necessitated claim 1. Rejection of claim 1 is therefore incorporated herein.
28. (Withdrawn)
As to claim 29, it is a method claim necessitated claim 14. Rejection of claim 14 is therefore incorporated herein.
30. (Withdrawn)
Examiner’s Note
Examiner has cited particular column, line number, paragraphs and/or figure(s) in the reference(s) as applied to the claims for the convenience of the Applicant. Although the specified citations are representative of the teachings of the art and are applied to the specific limitations within the individual claim, other passages and figures may apply as well. It is respectfully requested from the applicant in preparing responses, to fully consider the reference(s) in entirety as potentially teaching all or part of the claimed invention, as well as the context of the passage as taught by the prior art or disclosed by the Examiner.
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Qun Shen whose telephone number is (571) 270-7927. The examiner can normally be reached on Mon-Friday from 9:00-5:00. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner's Supervisor, Amandeep Saini can be reached on (571) 272-3382. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is (571) 273-8300. Information regarding the status of an application may be obtained from the Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system. Status information for published applications may be obtained from either Private PAIR or Public PAIR. Status information for unpublished applications is available through Private PAIR only. For more information about the PAIR system, see http://pair-direct.uspto.gov. Should you have questions on access to the Private PAIR system, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free).
/QUN SHEN/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2662
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