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 .
Remarks
This office action is responsive to the preliminary amendment filed on 03/01/2024.
Claim(s) 1-19, 22 is/are pending in the application.
Claim(s) 20-21 was/were canceled.
Claim Objections
Claim(s) 3-10, 14 is/are objected to because of the following informalities:
claims 3-10, 14 are all missing transitional phrases which should follow the preamble, such as “whereas” or “comprising”, and go directly to the body of the claim.
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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.
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1, 11, 22 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) as being anticipated by Bouaziz et al. (US 2014/0362091 A1).
In regards to claim 1, Bouaziz teaches a method for efficiently compressing a dynamic 3D model sequence, comprising:
storing a 3D model of one frame of the dynamic 3D model sequence as a reference model (e.g. [0069],Fig.3: each frame of input data 302 may be processed using an interleaved optimization that sequentially refines tracking 308 and a model 310; output of the tracking refinement 308 may comprise tracking parameters 312 including rigid alignment and blendshape weights per frame, which can be used to derive a virtual avatar 314 in real-time; furthermore, a user-specific dynamic expression model 316 may be adapted during model refinement 310 based on facial characteristics of the observed user according to the input data 302 using an adaptive dynamic expression model 318; [0075]: input data 302 may be pre-processed to detect the face of the user and crop the depth map in order to obtain a 3D scan of the face geometry of the user in neutral expression; from this initial face scan, a first approximation of b0 may be computed by aligning the parameterized neutral expression to the depth map; Examiner’s note: where b0 is viewed to correspond to the reference model);
determining an initial correspondence between vertices of the reference model and a target model to align the reference model and the target model by optimizing an energy function of the reference model so as to obtain initialized fusion parameters, wherein the target model is a 3D model of remaining frames of the dynamic 3D model sequence (e.g. [0070]: tracking refinement 308 includes a determination of a rigid alignment of the face model to the input data 302, such as the input depth map 306 or the image 304; the rigid alignment may be defined by a rotation matrix R and a translation vector t at each frame t of the input data 302; furthermore, blendshape weights x = [x1, … , xn]T may be determined for each frame t and used to generate the graphical facial expression by applying the blendshape weights to avatar blendshapes representing the virtual avatar 314; [0072]: during model refinement 310, the identity PCA parameters y = [y1, … , yl]T for the neutral face expression b0 of the user and the deformation coefficients Z = {z1, … , zn}, with zi = [zi, 1, … , zi,k]T for each blendshape bi are determined; [0079]: the rigid motion or alignment may be estimated by directly aligning the static reconstructed mesh of the previous frame t-1 with the acquired depth map of the current frame t using ICP with point-plane constraints; Examiner’s note: shows initialization of parameters for b0 and correspondence of model vertices of b0 to each frame); and
determining the final fusion parameters for deforming the reference model into the target model by iteratively optimizing the initialized fusion parameters (e.g. [0074]: general optimization including the tracking refinement 308 and model refinement 310 may alternate between two stages; in the first stage related to tracking refinement 308, also referred to herein as tracking stage, the rigid alignment and blendshape weights x may be estimated, keeping the dynamic expression model 316, 318 fixed; in the stage related to model refinement 310, also referred to herein as model refinement stage, the user-specific dynamic expression model 316 may be refined by solving for the PCA parameters y and the deformation coefficients Z keeping the blendshape weights x fixed; the alternating processing may be bootstrapped by initializing the dynamic expression model 316, 318 with a PCA reconstruction for the neutral expression and a deformation transfer from the template model of the adaptive dynamic expression model 318 to the user-specific dynamic expression model 316; [0080]: given the rigid motion and the current set of blendshapes B of the user-specific dynamic expression model 316, the estimation of the blendshape weights x that best match the input data 302 of the current frame may be formulated as a combined 2D/3D registration; the 2D registration may be formulated using optical flow constraints, and the 3D registration may use ICP as discussed above; this may yield a fitting energy of the form Efit = ||A(b0+ΔBx)-c||22, where (A, c) summarize the registration constraints on a pre-defined subset of the face vertices, such as the front-part of the face mesh; the optimization may iteratively minimize the following energy according to Equation (1): argmin Efit + λ1 Esmooth + λ2 Esparse); Examiner’s note: shows optimization of parameters and energy function).
In regards to device claim 11 and medium claim 22, claim(s) 11, 22 recite(s) limitations that is/are similar in scope to the limitations recited in claim 1. Therefore, claim(s) 11, 22 is/are subject to rejections under the same rationale as applied hereinabove for claim 1.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim(s) 2-10, 12-19 is/are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims. To note, claims 3-6 are included as they depend on claim 2, claims 8-10 are included as they depend on claim 7, claims 13-16 are included as they depend on claim 12, and claims 18-19 are included as they depend on claim 17.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Claim(s) 2-10, 12-19 was/were carefully reviewed and a search with regards to independent claim(s) 1, 11 has been made. Accordingly, those claim(s) are believed to be distinct from the prior art searched.
Regarding claim(s) 2-6, 12-16 (and specifically independent claim(s) 1, 11), the prior art search was found to neither anticipate nor suggest the method of claim 1/device of claim 11, wherein determining an initial correspondence between vertices of the reference model and a target model to align the reference model and the target model by optimizing an energy function of the reference model further comprising dividing the vertices of the reference model into a plurality of blocks, searching for the corresponding point of each vertex of the reference model in the target model through an Iterative Closest Point (ICP) algorithm for each vertex in the block in units of blocks, so as to solve a rigid transformation of a block in the reference model transforming to the target model, wherein the rigid transformation includes a translation vector
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and a rotation vector
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(emphasis added).
Regarding claim(s) 7-10, 17-19 (and specifically independent claim(s) 1, 11), the prior art search was found to neither anticipate nor suggest the method of claim 1/device of claim 11, [wherein] a plurality of control points are randomly sampled from the vertices of the reference model, and weighting of an affine transformation of the control points is used to represent the deformation of the vertices in the reference model
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(emphasis added).
It is viewed that any of the previously cited references or any of the prior art searched, in part or in whole, cannot be combined in such a way to render the claimed invention obvious.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JED-JUSTIN IMPERIAL whose telephone number is (571)270-5807. The examiner can normally be reached Monday to Friday, 9am - 6pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Daniel 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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/JED-JUSTIN IMPERIAL/ Examiner, Art Unit 2616
/DANIEL F HAJNIK/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2616