Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
1. 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
Status
2. This communication is in response to the Application filed on 05.02.2024. Therefore, claims 1-19 will be subject to further examination and evaluation in due course, and will be presented for examination, as detailed below.
Oath/Declaration
3. The Applicant's oath/declaration has been reviewed by the Examiner and is found to conform to the requirements prescribed in 37 C.F.R. 1.63.
Information Disclosure Statement
4. As required by M.P.E.P. 609(C), the Applicant' s submission of the Information Disclosure Statements (IDS) have been acknowledged by the Examiner. The cited references have been considered in the examination of the claims. As required by M.P.E.P 609 C (2), a copy of the PTOL-1449 initialed, signed and dated by the Examiner is attached to the instant Office action.
Priority / Filing Date
5. No priority date has been claimed for this application. Accordingly, the Examiner will rely on the actual filling or 371(c) date of 05.02.2024, for purposes of prosecution.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
6. 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.
7. The factual inquiries 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.
8. Claims 1-14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chattopadhyay et al., Patent No.: US 10,695,907 in view of Patrick et al., Pub. No.: US 2019/0134821.
As per claim 1, Ko discloses a method of determining a health profile of a mechanical device [see at least the abstract (e.g., monitoring robot health in manufacturing environments), and as illustrated in FIG. 1 below] comprising:
determining, by a mobile robotic system [see at least the abstract (e.g., a robot in a semiconductor wafer manufacturing facility, includes a sensor coupled to the robot)], a location of a mechanical device [see at least ¶0027 (e.g., the sensor 112 may be disposed in other locations on the first robot 102 (e.g., on a shoulder of the first robot 102), and as illustrated in FIG. 1 below]:
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measuring, by a vibration measurement device controlled by the mobile robotic system, a vibration parameter at the location of the component of the mechanical device [as illustrated in FIG. 5 that are graphs depicting example measurements taken by a sensor on a healthy robot and a faulty robot and shown in the time domain for X, Y, and Z direction vibrations, and see FIG. 5 below];
FIG. 5 are graphs depicting example measurements.
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determining, by a processor, if the vibration measurement is within a predetermined range [see at least ¶0038 (e.g., the sensor 112 may have a measurement range of +/−2 g (acceleration due to gravity=9.8 meters per second squared (m/s.sup.2)) standard, an accelerometer bandwidth of 0 hertz (Hz)-500 Hz, an accuracy of 10 milli-g (mg), a resolution of 12 bit, and a continuous sampling rate of 512 Hz)]; and
alerting personnel if the vibration measurement is not within the predetermined range [see at least ¶0049 (e.g., In the illustrated example of FIG. 2, the robot health monitor 110 includes an alerter 208 that outputs an alert or notification if an outlier in one of the feature(s) is detected by the outlier detector 206), and see FIG. 2 below].
FIG. 2 is a block diagram of an example implementation of an example robot health monitor of the robot health monitoring system of FIG. 1.
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Chattopadhyay discloses all elements per claimed invention as explained above. Chattopadhyay does not expressly disclose determining, by the mobile robotic system, a location of a component of the mechanical device. However, Patrick discloses determining, by the mobile robotic system, a location of a component of the mechanical device [see at least ¶0009 (e.g., a robotic system includes a controller configured to obtain image data from one or more optical sensors and to determine one or more of a location and/or pose of a vehicle component based on the image data)].
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made to incorporate the teaching of Patrick in order to provide robotic systems and methods that provide a large form factor mobile robot with an industrial manipulator arm to effectively detect, identify, and subsequently manipulate components to perform maintenance on power systems [Patrick: ¶0027].
As per claim 2, Chattopadhyay in view of Patrick discloses wherein the mobile robotic system navigates autonomously or semi-autonomously [see at least Patrick ¶0030 (e.g., robotic system autonomously navigates)].
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made to incorporate the teaching of Patrick in order to provide robotic systems and methods that provide a large form factor mobile robot with an industrial manipulator arm to effectively detect, identify, and subsequently manipulate components to perform maintenance on power systems [Patrick: ¶0027].
As per claims 3-5, Chattopadhyay in view of Patrick discloses wherein the mobile robotic system comprises an extendable element, the extendable element equipped with a gripper for holding the vibration measurement device; and mobile robotic system comprises one or more pressure sensors [see Patrick ¶0075 (e.g., the manipulator unit 620 may include one or more arms, hinges, linkages, or other mechanisms to control the position of one or more grippers, holders, cameras, or other devices), and Patrick ¶0144 (e.g., when a force or pressure is applied to the force/torque sensor 1202 electrical characteristics of electrical signals generated by the force/torque sensor 1202 may change)] .
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made to incorporate the teaching of Patrick in order to provide robotic systems and methods that provide a large form factor mobile robot with an industrial manipulator arm to effectively detect, identify, and subsequently manipulate components to perform maintenance on power systems [Patrick: ¶0027].
As per claim 7, Chattopadhyay discloses wherein the processor is a local processor, the local processor local to the mobile robotic system [see at least ¶0021 (e.g., a local computing device (e.g., a server, a virtual machine, etc.))].
As per claim 8, Chattopadhyay discloses wherein the processor is a remote processor [see at least ¶0021 (e.g., a cloud-based computing device (e.g., a server, a virtual machine, etc.) that is remote to the manufacturing facility)], the remote processor remote from the mobile robotic system and communicatively coupled to the mobile robotic system by a networking interface [see at least ¶007 (e.g., the processor platform 900 of the illustrated example also includes an interface circuit 920. The interface circuit 920 may be implemented by any type of interface standard, such as an Ethernet interface, a universal serial bus (USB), and/or a PCI express interface)].
As per claims 12-14, Chattopadhyay discloses wherein the mobile robotic system is an airborne mobile robotic system; wherein the mobile robotic system determines the location of the mechanical device based at least in part on a map of a facility; and further comprising generating a work order to maintenance personnel if the vibration measurement is not within the predetermined range [see at least the rejection of claim 1 above. Similar rationale is noticed for the combination of Chattopadhyay and Patrick, as noted for claim 1 above. In light of the preceding examination, claims 12-14 is hereby rejected on grounds substantially similar to those articulated in the rejection of claim 1. As detailed in the prior rejection, the rationale and basis for rejecting claim 1 are applicable to claims 12-14. For a comprehensive understanding of the rejection grounds, reference is made to the detailed explanation provided in the rejection of claim 1, which is incorporated herein by reference].
9. Claims 9-11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chattopadhyay in view of Patrick, and further in view of Patrick et al., Pub. No.: US 2024/0091953.
As per claims 9-11, Chattopadhyay in view of Patrick 1953’ discloses wherein the processor implements a first machine learning model to determine the location of the mechanical device; wherein the processor implements a second machine learning model to determine the location of the component of the mechanical device; and wherein the processor implements a third machine learning model to determine if the vibration measurement is within the predetermined range [see at least Patrick 1953’ ¶0110 (e.g., the controller and/or the robotic control system may have a local data collection system deployed that may use machine learning to enable derivation-based learning outcomes),
¶0112 (e.g., controller and/or robotic control system can use this artificial intelligence or machine learning to receive input (e.g., a location or change in location), use a model that associates locations with different operating modes to select an operating mode of the one or more functional devices of the robotic system, the power system, or the like, and then provide an output (e.g., the operating mode selected using the model)), and
¶0156 (e.g., a learning-based algorithm (e.g., Adaptive Boosting, Histogram of Oriented Gradients) to filter the one or more possible locations.)].
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made to incorporate the teaching of Patrick 1953’ in order to provide a robotic system includes determining a location and/or a pose of a power system component based on data received from one or more sensors, and determining a mapping of a location of a robotic system within a model of an external environment of the robotic system based on the data [Patrick 1953’: abstract].
10. Claims 15-19, which are parallel to claims 1-14 in terms of scope,
limitations, and share similar characteristics, as discussed and examined
above. Consequently, they are rejected based on the same logical and
underlying reasoning, and justification that apply to claims 1-14. The
similarity between these claims necessitates the same grounds for rejection, as explained in detail above [note the discussion of claims 1-14].
Conclusion
11. The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. The PTO-1449 forms have been reviewed and considered.
US 2021/0302271, Ko: discloses system for vibration inspection of a vehicle for inspecting a quality of the vehicle assembled in a vehicle factory's in-line.
US 12,387,613, Verma: discloses a method of unmanned machine synchronization using robotic sensing.
12. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Garcia Ade whose telephone number is (571)272-5586. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday - Friday.
13. 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, Florian Zeender can be reached on 517-272-6790. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
14. 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). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative or access to the automated information system, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/Garcia Ade/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3627
/GA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3627
GARCIA ADE
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 3687
Prosecution Insights