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 .
Specification
The title of the invention is not descriptive. A new title is required that is clearly indicative of the invention to which the claims are directed.
The following title is suggested: Tracklet Splitting and Merging Based on Temporal Windows Before and After Splitting Point To Reduce ID Switch
Claim Objections
Claims 2 and 12 objected to because of the following informalities: Claims 2 and 12 do not define “KL distance” acronym which should be Kullback-Leibler Divergence distance. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 2-7, 10, 12-17, and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claims 2 and 12 recite “wherein the processing circuitry is configured to determine a frame as a splitting point of a tracklet including the frame in a case that the frame satisfies at least one of:
a dropping degree of a KL distance between a first subset and a second subset of the similarity set of the frame being greater than or equal to a first predetermined threshold, wherein the first subset corresponds to the similarity between the frame and the frame in the first predetermined time period immediately before the frame, and the second subset corresponds to the similarity between the frame and the frame in the second predetermined time period immediately after the frame;
a dropping degree of a ratio of slopes of the first subset and the second subset being greater than or equal to a second predetermined threshold;
a dropping degree of a difference between an average of the first subset and an average of the second subset being greater than or equal to a third predetermined threshold; and
the average of the first subset decreases, the average of the second subset increases, and the difference between the average of the first subset and the average of the second subset being less than or equal to a fourth predetermined threshold.
Claims 2 and 12 do not provide proper context for the “ratio of slopes” or “slopes” which are understood from the specification to refer to equations 3 and 4 but wholesale lack of content in the claim language renders the expression unclear and indefinite. Furthermore, it is unclear to what the “average” refers; perhaps average KL distance is meant but the first “dropping degree” determination is separated from the rest of the dropping degrees and averages such that it is unclear what these terms mean. Moreover, the averages recited in the last two paragraphs lack context and are not clearly understood.
Claims 10 and 18 recite “where the processing circuitry is further configured to determine a temporarily ended tracklet as a sub-segment to be merged”. It is unclear what is meant by temporarily or temporarily ended tracklet. It is also unclear into what element the sub-segment will be merged.
Claims 3-7 and 13-17 are rejected due to their dependency upon claims 2 and 12, respectively.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claim 20 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The relevant claim limitation recites " computer readable storage medium storing instructions”. However, the usage of this phrase encompasses both "non-transitory" and "transitory" recording mediums. The specification further explicitly does not limit the utilization of a non-transitory computer program product; see [0081] of published application. Therefore, when the broadest reasonable interpretation of a claim covers a signal per se, the claim must be rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as covering non-statutory subject matter. See In re Nuijten, 500 F.3d 1346, 1356-57 (Fed. Cir. 2007) (transitory embodiments are not directed to statutory subject matter). Therefore, claim 20 is non-statutory. A suggestion is made that the Applicant amend the claims to recite a non-transitory computer readable storage medium.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1, 8-11, and 18- 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Yang {Yang, Fan, et al. "ReMOT: A model-agnostic refinement for multiple object tracking." Image and Vision Computing 106 (2021): 104091}.
Claim 1
In regards to claim 1, Yang discloses an information processing device, comprising:
processing circuitry {see section 4, Experiments including implementations using software including Pytorch which is an open source machine learning framework that runs on a computer with processing circuitry} configured to
calculate, for each tracklet of a plurality of tracklets, a similarity set of each frame of a predetermined frame set included in the tracklet, wherein the similarity set includes a similarity between the frame and a frame in a first predetermined time period immediately before the frame and a similarity between the frame and a frame in a second predetermined time period immediately after the frame {pg. 2, sections 3, 3.2, Fig. 2 including calculating similarity of intra-frame observations, equation 2 which includes similarity between frames i and j of the tracklet};
determine, for each tracklet of the plurality of tracklets, a splitting point of the tracklet from the predetermined frame set based on the similarity set, wherein the splitting point indicates a change of an object involved in the tracklet {pg. 3, section 3.2 in which average cosine similarity is used to decide splitting point, pg. 4 including splitting when intra-tracklet appearance affinity is lower};
split a corresponding tracklet into a plurality of sub-segments by using the splitting point {see above for determining splitting point. See also pg. 4, Fig. 4 illustrating splitting a tracklet into two segments t1-t2 and t3-t4 }; and
merge sub-segments which involve a same object and do not overlap temporally among sub-segments to be merged, to obtain a merged segment, wherein the sub-segments to be merged include the plurality of sub-segments {pg. 5, section 3.4 Merging process, equation 5 and Fig. 6}.
Claim 8
In regards to claim 8, Yang discloses wherein the processing circuitry is configured to determine whether sub-segments to be merged involve a same object based on a similarity between representative features of the sub-segments to be merged {pg. 5, section 3.4 Merging process, equation 5 and Fig. 6}.
Claim 9
In regards to claim 9, Yang discloses where the plurality of racklets are extracted from a video captured in real time {see Figs. 5, 9, sections 1, 3.1, and 4.6 while noting that videos are conventionally captured in real time}.
Claim 10
In regards to claim 10, Yang discloses where the processing circuitry is further configured to determine a temporarily ended tracklet as a sub-segment to be merged time {see 112(b) rejection above. To the limited extent understood, see Figs. 5, 9, sections 1, 3.1, and 4.6 while noting that videos are conventionally captured in real time}.
Claims 11, 18, 19, and 20
The rejection of device claims 1, 10, 9; and 1 above applies mutatis mutandis to the corresponding limitations of method claim 11, 18, 19; and computer readable medium claim 20 while noting that the rejection above cites to both device and method disclosures. For the computer readable storage medium storing program limitations of claim 20 see see section 4, Experiments including implementations using software including Pytorch which is an open source machine learning framework that may be stored in a computer readable medium and executed on a computer with processing circuitry.
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 2 and 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yang, Dorea (C. C. Dorea, M. Pardas and F. Marques, "A Hierarchical Trajectory-Based Representation for Video," 2007 International Workshop on Content-Based Multimedia Indexing, Talence, France, 2007, pp. 275-282, doi: 10.1109/CBMI.2007.385422) and Ben (WO 2013072401 A2).
Claim 2
In regards to claim 2, Yang is not relied upon to disclose wherein the processing circuitry is configured to determine a frame as a splitting point of a tracklet including the frame in a case that the frame satisfies at least one of [the 4 recited conditions].
Dorea is an analogous reference from the same field of tracking objects including temporal splitting and merging of tracklets. In more detail, Dorea teaches an information processing device, comprising: processing circuitry configured to
calculate, for each tracklet of a plurality of tracklets, a similarity set of each frame of a predetermined frame set included in the tracklet, wherein the similarity set includes a similarity between the frame and a frame in a first predetermined time period immediately before the frame and a similarity between the frame and a frame in a second predetermined time period immediately after the frame {See Section 2.2 including affine modeling residual which is used to re-segment/split tracklet regions, and similarity measure, equation (2). Section 3.3 RTAD relative temporal area difference, equation (3)};
determine, for each tracklet of the plurality of tracklets, a splitting point of the tracklet from the predetermined frame set based on the similarity set, wherein the splitting point indicates a change of an object involved in the tracklet {see section 3.3 temporal continuity RTAD which is used to determine the splitting point (splitting instant) as the point of maximum RTAD over all consecutive, temporal region (tracklet) pairs which exceeds a given threshold};
split a corresponding tracklet into a plurality of sub-segments by using the splitting point {section 3.3, splitting instant (splitting point) used to split corresponding tracklet (regions) into plural segments}; and
merge sub-segments which involve a same object and do not overlap temporally among sub-segments to be merged, to obtain a merged segment, wherein the sub-segments to be merged include the plurality of sub-segments {sections 2, 2.2 merging regions (tracklets) based on color distance. See also 2.2 merging based on similarity measure that also uses angular error. See also Section 3.2 Trajectory Merging while noting that trajectories (tracklets) created through merging are also subject to temporal splitting thus resulting in merging sub-segments of a same object which do not overlap temporally among sub-sugments to be merged}.
In regards to claim 1, Dorea teaches wherein the processing circuitry is configured to determine a frame as a splitting point of a tracklet including the frame in a case that the frame satisfies at least one of:
a dropping degree of a
{see section 3.3 temporal continuity RTAD which is used to determine the splitting point (splitting instant) as the point of maximum RTAD over all consecutive, temporal region (tracklet) pairs which exceeds a given threshold. Note that the iterative RTAD calculation over temporally adjacent subsets and the use of a maximum RTAD over all such temporally adjacent subsets results in the claimed dropping degree distance except that RTAD does not use a KL distance value. In other words, the splitting point is determined by the max RTAD exceeding a given threshold which occurs when the distance between a first subset and a second subset of the similarity set of the frame being greater than or equal to a first predetermined threshold};
Dorea clearly teaches the concept of using temporal continuity to determine splitting point including employing an iterative max RTAD exceeding a given threshold
over all such temporally adjacent subsets (first subset and second subset) that results in the claimed dropping degree distance except that RTAD does not use a KL distance value between a first subset and a second subset but instead a relative temporal area difference.
Ben teaches the KL distance values (Kullback-Leibler Divergence distance) are conventionally used to determine similarity between color histograms for tracking multiple people using tracklets as per abstract, pgs. 4, 30.
It 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 to have modified Yang which already determines, for each tracklet of the plurality of tracklets, a splitting point of the tracklet from the predetermined frame set based on the similarity set such that the processing circuitry is configured to determine a frame as a splitting point of a tracklet including the frame in a case that the frame satisfies at least one a dropping degree of a distance between a first subset and a second subset of the similarity set of the frame being greater than or equal to a first predetermined threshold, wherein the first subset corresponds to the similarity between the frame and the frame in the first predetermined time period immediately before the frame, and the second subset corresponds to the similarity between the frame and the frame in the second predetermined time period immediately after the frame as taught by Dorea and to employ a KL distance as taught by Ben to determine similarity because doing so ensures temporal continuity of tracks by detecting violations of temporal continuity within a trajectory to decide the splitting instant as motivated by Dorea in section 3.3, because there is a reasonable expectation of success and/or because doing so merely combines prior art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results.
Potentially Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3-7 and 13-17 are potentially allowable if the 112(b) rejection of intervening claims 2 and 12 is resolved and if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Although one of the options of base claim 2 is considered obvious (see above rejection), the further conditions of claim 3 have not been taught or fairly suggested by the prior art of record and recite as follows: wherein for each tracklet, the splitting point is determined from a splitting point determination start frame to a splitting point determination end frame in the predetermined frame set; and the splitting point determination start frame is a frame for which a dropping degree of the second subset is greater than or equal to a fifth predetermined threshold, and the splitting point determination end frame is a frame for which an increasing degree of the first subset is greater than or equal to a sixth predetermined threshold.
Furthermore, the other three options for determine splitting point recited in claims 2 and 12 likely also recite allowable subject matter but such indication is hampered by the 112(b) rejections of these claims. In other words, the disclosed-but-as-yet-clearly-recited splitting point options of claim 2 that are not rejected by Dorea likely recite allowable subject matter.
Claims 4-7 and 14-17 are potentially allowable due to their dependency upon claims 2 and 12.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Li US 20200250832 A1 discloses tracking objects including splitting and merging tracks that employs average value of optical flow associated with detected regions to determine when to split. See [0023], [0044]-[0048], fig. 4A
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/MICHAEL ROBERT CAMMARATA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2667