DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
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.
Claim 1-2, 8-15 and 17-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Woop U.S. Patent Application 20220051467 in view of Kim U.S. Patent Application 20230419586, and further in view of Warren U.S. Patent Application 20020126545.
Regarding claim 1, Woop discloses One or more processors (processor cores 107 and graphics processors 108) comprising processing circuitry to:
determine, based at least on map data, a pathway structure corresponding to one or more navigable pathways of a simulation environment (paragraph [0428]: FIG. 43 shows an acceleration structure which may be used for hybrid traversal, which is a two-level tree with a single top level BVH 4300 and several bottom level BVHs 4301 and 4302. Graphical elements are shown to the right to indicate inner traversal paths 4303, outer traversal paths 4304, traversal nodes 4305, leaf nodes with triangles 4306, and leaf nodes with custom primitives 4307);
generate a data structure within the simulation environment, the data structure having a root level representing the pathway structure (paragraph [0386]: At the top of the tree structure is the root node which encloses all of the geometric objects in a given scene),
wherein the data structure comprises a plurality of mesh tiles, at least one mesh tile of the plurality of mesh tiles comprising one or more texture nodes of a surface (paragraph [0428]: traversal nodes 4305, leaf nodes with triangles 4306, and leaf nodes with custom primitives 4307; paragraph [0905]: each quadtree node 8800, 8810-8813 stores an axis-aligned bounding box (AABB) over the vertex positions of the 2D triangle mesh 8820 (texture)),
wherein an individual mesh tile of the plurality of mesh tiles is instantiated at a level of the data structure based at least on a function of distance (paragraph [0606]: the “level-of-detail” (LOD) can refer to the selection of mesh resolutions based on variables such as distance from the camera);
determine a mapping that associates the one or more texture nodes with one or more layers of a texture mipmap based at least on a tree data structure level (paragraph [0670]: FIG. 70A illustrates an example in which a primitive surface 7000 is finely tessellated to generate the base subdivision surface 7001. A displacement function is applied to the vertices of the base subdivision surface 7001 to create a displacement mapping 7002; paragraph [0904]: a geometry image is formed by mapping a 3D triangle mesh into a 2D plane, resulting in an implied triangle connectivity defined by a regular grid of vertex positions. The resulting 2D geometry image can be processed in various ways within the graphics pipeline... using mipmaps; paragraph [0316]: the nodes are arranged in layers); and
render a topological mesh using the one or more texture nodes and based on the mapping (paragraph [0168]: rendering three-dimensional images and scenes using processing functions that act upon 3D primitive shapes (e.g., rectangle, triangle, etc.)).
Woop discloses all the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above. However, Woop fails to disclose data representing a terrain surface, at least one mesh tile of the plurality of mesh tiles comprising one or more texture of a terrain surface, instantiate at a level of the data structure based at least on a function of distance from the pathway structure.
Kim discloses data representing a terrain surface, at least one mesh tile of the plurality of mesh tiles comprising one or more texture of a terrain surface (paragraph [0072]: generating a terrain texture map, which allow tiles to be smoothly connected without causing visibility check errors and color separation errors when multi-view images are received, a large-scale terrain is partitioned into tiles, and mesh/texture is reconstructed and generated).
Therefore, it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Woop’s to use terrain texture map as taught by Kim, to generate a texture map for a three-dimensional wide area terrain mesh reconstructed using multi-view images.
Woop as modified by Kim discloses all the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above. However, Woop as modified by Kim fails to disclose instantiating at a level of the data structure based at least on a function of distance from the pathway structure.
Warren discloses instantiating at a level of the data structure based at least on a function of distance from the pathway structure (paragraph [0086]: The estimated detail level will be calculated from the cubelet address by calculating the distance of each of its components from the root of its member tree and applying the Euclidian distance formula to it).
Therefore, it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Woop and Kim’s to consider distance from tree structure as taught by Warren, to increase the efficiency of data access.
Regarding claim 2, Woop as modified by Kim and Warren discloses the one or more processors of claim 1, wherein the data structure comprises a quadtree data structure, wherein each of the one or more texture nodes comprises a node of the quadtree data structure (Woop’s paragraph [0905]: FIG. 88, one embodiment of the invention performs ray tracing by generating a quadtree structure 8855 over the geometry image domain, where each quadtree node 8800, 8810-8813 stores an axis-aligned bounding box (AABB) over the vertex positions of the 2D triangle mesh 8820).
Therefore, it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Woop’s to use terrain texture map as taught by Kim, to generate a texture map for a three-dimensional wide area terrain mesh reconstructed using multi-view images; and combine Woop and Kim’s to consider distance from tree structure as taught by Warren, to increase the efficiency of data access.
Regarding claim 8, Woop as modified by Kim and Warren discloses the one or more processors of claim 1, wherein the processing circuitry is further to compute the function of distance based at least on one of:
a two-dimensional (2D) Euclidian distance between the pathway structure and a mesh tile boundary; a three-dimensional (3D) Euclidian distance between the pathway structure at a first elevation, and the mesh tile boundary at a second elevation; a closest distance between a point on the mesh tile boundary and a primitive representing at least a segment of the pathway structure; an average distance between the mesh tile boundary and a set of features representing one or more navigable pathways; and a mesh tile distance to the pathway structure in combination with a current distance of one or more ego agents from the mesh tile (Warren’s paragraph [0086]: The estimated detail level will be calculated from the cubelet address by calculating the distance of each of its components from the root of its member tree and applying the Euclidian distance formula to it).
Therefore, it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Woop’s to use terrain texture map as taught by Kim, to generate a texture map for a three-dimensional wide area terrain mesh reconstructed using multi-view images; and combine Woop and Kim’s to consider distance from tree structure as taught by Warren, to increase the efficiency of data access.
Regarding claim 9, Woop as modified by Kim and Warren discloses the one or more processors of claim 1, wherein the processing circuitry is further to render at least a portion of the topological mesh using one or more light transport simulation techniques (Woop’s paragraph [0003]: Ray tracing is a technique in which a light transport is simulated through physically-based rendering; paragraph [0168]: rendering three-dimensional images and scenes using processing functions that act upon 3D primitive shapes (e.g., rectangle, triangle, etc.)).
Therefore, it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Woop’s to use terrain texture map as taught by Kim, to generate a texture map for a three-dimensional wide area terrain mesh reconstructed using multi-view images; and combine Woop and Kim’s to consider distance from tree structure as taught by Warren, to increase the efficiency of data access.
Regarding claim 10, Woop as modified by Kim and Warren discloses the one or more processors of claim 1, wherein the processing circuitry is further to generate the data structure with nodes that represent a top-down visualization of the terrain surface (Woop’s paragraph [0428]: FIG. 43 shows an acceleration structure which may be used for hybrid traversal, which is a two-level tree with a single top level BVH 4300 and several bottom level BVHs 4301 and 4302. Graphical elements are shown to the right to indicate inner traversal paths 4303, outer traversal paths 4304, traversal nodes 4305, leaf nodes with triangles 4306, and leaf nodes with custom primitives 4307; Kim’s paragraph [0072]: generating a terrain texture map, which allow tiles to be smoothly connected without causing visibility check errors and color separation errors when multi-view images are received, a large-scale terrain is partitioned into tiles, and mesh/texture is reconstructed and generated).
Therefore, it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Woop’s to use terrain texture map as taught by Kim, to generate a texture map for a three-dimensional wide area terrain mesh reconstructed using multi-view images; and combine Woop and Kim’s to consider distance from tree structure as taught by Warren, to increase the efficiency of data access.
Regarding claim 11, Woop as modified by Kim and Warren discloses the one or more processors of claim 1, wherein the processing circuitry is further to simulate operation of one or more ego agents on the one or more navigable pathways of the simulation environment based at least on sensor data comprising an ego agent perspective view of the topological mesh (Woop’s paragraph [0606]: the “level-of-detail” (LOD) can refer to the selection of mesh resolutions based on variables such as distance from the camera (ego agent)).
Therefore, it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Woop’s to use terrain texture map as taught by Kim, to generate a texture map for a three-dimensional wide area terrain mesh reconstructed using multi-view images; and combine Woop and Kim’s to consider distance from tree structure as taught by Warren, to increase the efficiency of data access.
Regarding claim 12, Woop as modified by Kim and Warren discloses the one or more processors of claim 1, wherein the processing circuitry is further to output scene description data representing a rendering of a surface terrain topology, based at least on the topological mesh, to a simulation platform (Kim’s paragraph [0072]: generating a terrain texture map, which allow tiles to be smoothly connected without causing visibility check errors and color separation errors when multi-view images are received, a large-scale terrain is partitioned into tiles, and mesh/texture is reconstructed and generated; Woop’s paragraph [0628]: The MetaData 6401 provides per-block information and constants required to decode the Vector Residuals 6402 into a list of AABBs).
Therefore, it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Woop’s to use terrain texture map as taught by Kim, to generate a texture map for a three-dimensional wide area terrain mesh reconstructed using multi-view images; and combine Woop and Kim’s to consider distance from tree structure as taught by Warren, to increase the efficiency of data access.
Regarding claim 13, Woop as modified by Kim and Warren discloses the one or more processors of claim 1, wherein the processing circuitry is 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 large language models (LLMs); a system implementing one or more vision language models (VLMs); 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 (Woop’s paragraph [0329]: The exemplary neural networks described above can be used to perform deep learning).
Therefore, it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Woop’s to use terrain texture map as taught by Kim, to generate a texture map for a three-dimensional wide area terrain mesh reconstructed using multi-view images; and combine Woop and Kim’s to consider distance from tree structure as taught by Warren, to increase the efficiency of data access.
Claim 14 recites the functions of the apparatus recited in claim 1 as apparatus steps. Accordingly, the mapping of the prior art to the corresponding functions of the apparatus in claim 1 applies to the apparatus steps of claim 14.
Claim 15 recites the functions of the apparatus recited in claim 2 as apparatus steps. Accordingly, the mapping of the prior art to the corresponding functions of the apparatus in claim 2 applies to the apparatus steps of claim 15.
Claim 17 recites the functions of the apparatus recited in claim 8 as apparatus steps. Accordingly, the mapping of the prior art to the corresponding functions of the apparatus in claim 8 applies to the apparatus steps of claim 17.
Claim 18 recites the functions of the apparatus recited in claim 11 as apparatus steps. Accordingly, the mapping of the prior art to the corresponding functions of the apparatus in claim 11 applies to the apparatus steps of claim 18.
Claim 19 recites the functions of the apparatus recited in claim 13 as apparatus steps. Accordingly, the mapping of the prior art to the corresponding functions of the apparatus in claim 13 applies to the apparatus steps of claim 19.
Claim 3 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Woop U.S. Patent Application 20220051467 in view of Kim U.S. Patent Application 20230419586, in view of Warren U.S. Patent Application 20020126545, and further in view of Hux U.S. Patent Application 20210149189.
Regarding claim 3, Woop as modified by Kim and Warren discloses all the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above. However, Woop as modified by Kim and Warren fails to disclose the texture mipmap comprises a first layer that includes a first texture image, and one or more subsequent layers after the first layer, wherein each subsequent layer after the first layer represents a downsampling of a prior layer texture image.
Hux discloses the texture mipmap comprises a first layer that includes a first texture image, and one or more subsequent layers after the first layer, wherein each subsequent layer after the first layer represents a downsampling of a prior layer texture image (paragraph [0029]: When textures are captured, a full-resolution base layer is obtained, in addition to a number of mipmap layers containing a progressively lower resolution representation of the base layer).
Therefore, it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Woop, Kim and Warren’s to use layers of texture mipmap as taught by Hux, to render a mixture of real-world content and virtual content.
Claim 4 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Woop U.S. Patent Application 20220051467 in view of Kim U.S. Patent Application 20230419586, in view of Warren U.S. Patent Application 20020126545, and further in view of Seiler U.S. Patent Application 20200134902.
Regarding claim 4, Woop as modified by Kim and Warren discloses all the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above. However, Woop as modified by Kim and Warren fails to disclose rendering the plurality of mesh tiles that are relatively closer to the pathway structure in the simulation environment using relatively higher density image layers of the texture mipmap, and render the plurality of mesh tiles that are relatively further from the pathway structure in the simulation environment using layers of the texture mipmap having relatively lower density texture images.
Seiler discloses rendering the plurality of mesh tiles that are relatively closer to the pathway structure in the simulation environment using relatively higher density image layers of the texture mipmap, and render the plurality of mesh tiles that are relatively further from the pathway structure in the simulation environment using layers of the texture mipmap having relatively lower density texture images (paragraph [0121]: The mipmap 1300 includes a plurality of mipmap levels, each corresponding to the label at a different resolution. For example, the largest mipmap level 1310 may have a resolution of 256×256 texels. The rest of the mipmap levels may have progressively lower resolutions… when selecting a mipmap level, the rendering system may determine the texel-to-pixel ratio for a projected pixel to determine what mipmap level to use; see fig. 13).
Therefore, it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Woop, Kim and Warren’s to select mipmap level as taught by Seiler, to render computer graphics in real-time.
Claim 16 recites the functions of the apparatus recited in claim 4 as apparatus steps. Accordingly, the mapping of the prior art to the corresponding functions of the apparatus in claim 4 applies to the apparatus steps of claim 16.
Claim 20 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Woop U.S. Patent Application 20220051467 in view of Warren U.S. Patent Application 20020126545.
Regarding claim 20, Woop discloses a method comprising:
rendering a three-dimensional mesh in a simulation environment generated by a simulation platform based at least on a mapping of one or more texture nodes of a data structure having a root level that corresponds to at least one pathway structure representing one or more navigable pathways of the simulation environment (paragraph [0168]: rendering three-dimensional images and scenes using processing functions that act upon 3D primitive shapes (e.g., rectangle, triangle, etc.); paragraph [0670]: FIG. 70A illustrates an example in which a primitive surface 7000 is finely tessellated to generate the base subdivision surface 7001. A displacement function is applied to the vertices of the base subdivision surface 7001 to create a displacement mapping 7002; paragraph [0904]: a geometry image is formed by mapping a 3D triangle mesh into a 2D plane, resulting in an implied triangle connectivity defined by a regular grid of vertex positions. The resulting 2D geometry image can be processed in various ways within the graphics pipeline... using mipmaps; paragraph [0428]: FIG. 43 shows an acceleration structure which may be used for hybrid traversal, which is a two-level tree with a single top level BVH 4300 and several bottom level BVHs 4301 and 4302. Graphical elements are shown to the right to indicate inner traversal paths 4303, outer traversal paths 4304, traversal nodes 4305, leaf nodes with triangles 4306, and leaf nodes with custom primitives 4307; paragraph [0386]: At the top of the tree structure is the root node which encloses all of the geometric objects in a given scene),
wherein the data structure comprises a plurality of mesh tiles, at least one mesh tile of the plurality of mesh tiles comprising one or more of the one or more texture nodes (paragraph [0428]: traversal nodes 4305, leaf nodes with triangles 4306, and leaf nodes with custom primitives 4307; paragraph [0905]: each quadtree node 8800, 8810-8813 stores an axis-aligned bounding box (AABB) over the vertex positions of the 2D triangle mesh 8820 (texture)),
wherein individual mesh tile of the plurality of mesh tiles are instantiated at a level of the data structure based at least on a function of distance (paragraph [0606]: the “level-of-detail” (LOD) can refer to the selection of mesh resolutions based on variables such as distance from the camera).
Woop discloses all the features with respect to claim 20 as outlined above. However, Woop fails to disclose instantiate at a level of the data structure based at least on a function of distance from the pathway structure.
Warren discloses instantiating at a level of the data structure based at least on a function of distance from the pathway structure (paragraph [0086]: The estimated detail level will be calculated from the cubelet address by calculating the distance of each of its components from the root of its member tree and applying the Euclidian distance formula to it).
Therefore, it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Woop’s to consider distance from tree structure as taught by Warren, to increase the efficiency of data access.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 5-7 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Claim 5 is about generating the data structure to comprise a plurality of data structure levels, wherein after the root level, each subsequent data structure level defines one or more mesh tiles that include a doubling of dimensions and a squared number of texture nodes in comparison to a mesh tile of a prior level of the data structure, where texture nodes are mapped to layers of the texture mipmap having increasingly down-sampled versions of a first texture image of a first layer of the texture mipmap.
Woop 20220051467, Kim 20230419586, Warren 20020126545, and Hux 20210149189 combined cannot teach these features perfectly. These limitations when read in light of the rest of the limitations in the claim and the claims to which it depends make the claim allowable subject matter.
Claim 6 is about instantiating one or more root-level mesh tiles of the data structure within a first distance from the pathway structure such that at least one of the one or more root-level mesh tiles includes a single texture node of the one or more texture nodes mapped to a first layer texture image of the texture mipmap; and instantiating one or more second-level mesh tiles of the data structure within a second distance from the pathway structure such that each of the one or more second-level mesh tiles includes four texture nodes of the one or more texture nodes mapped to a second layer texture image of the texture mipmap.
Woop 20220051467, Kim 20230419586, Warren 20020126545, and Seiler 20200134902 combined cannot teach these features perfectly. These limitations when read in light of the rest of the limitations in the claim and the claims to which it depends make the claim allowable subject matter.
Claim 7 depends on claim 6, are allowed base on same reason as claim 6.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Yi Yang whose telephone number is (571)272-9589. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday-Friday 9:00 AM-6:00 PM EST.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Daniel Hajnik can be reached on 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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/YI YANG/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2616
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