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 .
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 1-20 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
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.
Claim(s) 1, 2, 8, 10, 11, 12, 18 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Lim et al. (US PGPGPUB 20220055527).
[Claim 1]
A passenger vehicle (Paragraphs 38 and 43) , comprising:
a camera system (figs. 1-3) configured for machine vision functionality and including an image sensor (70) and a shutter (50) (Paragraphs 39 and 40, fig. 2, Light reflected from a subject (not illustrated) may be incident to the image sensor 70 through the lens 10 by controlling the aperture 30 and the shutter 50.);
an exterior lighting system that includes one or more headlights (light source 300, fig. 3) configured to illuminate a roadway ahead of the passenger vehicle and selectively provide a normal illumination (short exposure SET) and a predetermined peak illumination (long exposure LET) (Paragraph 63, the lamp controller 350 controls emitting more light from the light source 300 during a long exposure section compared to a short exposure, by synchronizing the timings of the long exposure section and the short exposure section of the camera 100.); and
a control system (150, fig. 3) configured to:
selectively open the shutter to obtain a machine vision image with the image sensor (Paragraph 57, In the inventive concepts, according to the preset operation scenario for the shutter open operation of the camera 100, the shutter 50 opening time may be controlled such that the SET section is output first, and then the shutter open time may be controlled such that the LET section is output.);
synchronize the exterior lighting system to provide the predetermined peak illumination while the shutter is open to thereby increase a range of the machine vision (Paragraphs 62 and 63, figs. 3 and 4, The quality of the image captured through the camera 100 may be improved by interlocking the lamp controller 350 with the camera 100 to concentrate the light used by the camera 100 in the long exposure section. The energy efficiency may be increased by turning off the light source 300 in the short exposure section. In other words, the lamp controller 350 controls emitting more light from the light source 300 during a long exposure section compared to a short exposure, by synchronizing the timings of the long exposure section and the short exposure section of the camera 100); and
output the machine vision image to a vehicle system for further use (Paragraph 43).
[Claim 2]
The vehicle of claim 1, wherein the predetermined peak illumination is provided only when the shutter is open (Paragraphs 57, 61-63).
[Claim 8]
The vehicle of claim 7 claim 1, wherein the camera system is a forward facing camera system (Paragraph 3, In general, a camera (or a camera module) for improving a driver's convenience and supporting the driver is installed in a vehicle. For example, the camera includes a front camera, a rear camera, an around-view monitoring system, a black box, or the like and Paragraph 37, FIG. 1 is a view illustrating a headlamp constituting a lamp controller interlocking system of a camera built-in headlamp according to an embodiment of the inventive concepts).
[Claim 10]
The vehicle of claim 1, wherein the vehicle system is an advanced driver assistance (ADAS) system (Paragraphs 3 and 43).
[Claims 11, 12, 18, 20]
These are method claims corresponding to apparatus claims 1, 2, 8 and 10 and are therefore analyzed and rejected based upon apparatus claims 1, 2, 8 and 10 respectively.
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.
Claim(s) 3 and 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lim et al. (US PGPUB 20220055527) in view of Hasegawa (US PGPUB 20120300074).
[Claim 3]
Lim teaches wherein the control system provides the predetermined peak illumination but fails to teach providing it during nighttime driving. However Hasegawa teaches an information representing the exposure time A and the information representing the exposure time B are stored in advance in the storage unit 23. The exposure time A is set to be relatively long and is used to image a traveling lane marking line or the like when detecting objects (including a traveling lane marking line, a vehicle, and a person) at night. On the other hand, the exposure time B is set to be shorter than the exposure time A and is used to image headlights which are strong light sources so as to avoid saturation (Paragraph 38).
Therefore taking the combined teachings of Lim and Hasegawa, it would be obvious to one skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to have been motivated to have peak illumination during nighttime driving in order to appropriately detect the traveling lane marking lines and the headlights (counter lamps or back lights) of oncoming vehicles at night.
[Claim 13]
This is a method claim corresponding to apparatus claim 3 and is therefore analyzed and rejected based upon apparatus claim 3.
Claim(s) 4 and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lim et al. (US PGPUB 20220055527) in view of Sergeev et al. (US PGPUB 20230137419).
[Claim 4]
Lim fails to teach wherein the control system provides the predetermined peak illumination for a duration shorter than a human eye integration time such that the predetermined peak illumination is imperceptible to the human eye of a driver of an oncoming vehicle. However Sergeev teaches an exposure time is not more than 1.5 ms. In some aspects, the exposure time is not more than 500 μs (Paragraph 14) which is lower than a human eye integration time such that the predetermined peak illumination is imperceptible to the human eye.[ The human eye's integration time, the period for accumulating light, is approximately 0.1 seconds (100 ms) under normal conditions, but can be longer in low light (up to 0.2 seconds) and shorter for high-frequency events].
Therefore taking the combined teachings of Lim and Sergeev, it would be obvious to one skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to have been motivated to have provides the predetermined peak illumination for a duration shorter than a human eye integration time such that the predetermined peak illumination is imperceptible to the human eye of a driver of an oncoming vehicle in order to reduce the glare of headlight to the driver.
[Claim 14]
This is a method claim corresponding to apparatus claim 4 and is therefore analyzed and rejected based upon apparatus claim 4.
Claim(s) 7, 9, 17 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lim et al. (US PGPUB 20220055527) in view of Alakarhu et al (US PGPUB 20220148320).
[Claim 7]
Lim fails to teach wherein the exterior lighting system includes one or more headlights the shutter and the exterior lighting system are synchronized to operate with an exposure period of approximately 10 ms when providing the predetermined peak illumination. However Alakarhu teaches that for exposures captured in series, the first frame may be 1 ms (first short-exposure frame), 2nd frame may be 10 ms (first long-exposure frame), 3rd frame may be 1.5 ms (second short exposure frame), and the 4th frame may be 15 ms (second long-exposure frame). The aforementioned values are merely one example, and the values in various embodiments may be different and varied as appropriate. In some examples, the LPR system may cycle through the exposure settings, or may use a random shuffle of the values to capture varying exposure of images (Paragraph 132).
Therefore taking the combined teachings of Lim and Alakarhu, it would be obvious to one skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to have been motivated to have the exterior lighting system includes one or more headlights the shutter and the exterior lighting system are synchronized to operate with an exposure period of approximately 10 ms when providing the predetermined peak illumination in order to optimize the exposure (or other) settings on one or both the long-exposure setting and short-exposure setting of the image sensor.
[Claim 9]
Lim fails to teach wherein the control system is configured to output the machine vision image to the vehicle system for object detection and classification. However Alakarhu teaches that to perform OCRing of the plurality of the captured multi-exposures images and/or merged/consolidated images, the LPR system may feed the aforementioned images to an AI-trained model to perform optimal OCRing. The AI model may be resident at and executing on a processor, such as GPU 706 in FIG. 4, at the vehicle, or may be located at a remote server 704 that is communicatively coupled with the components in the vehicle. The OCR of the license may include identification of the characters and/or the state classification (Paragraph 108).
Therefore taking the combined teachings of Lim and Alakarhu, it would be obvious to one skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to have been motivated to have to outputted the machine vision image to the vehicle system for object detection and classification in order to accurately capture images of vehicles at high speed without motion blur.
[Claims 17, 19]
These are method claims corresponding to apparatus claims 7 and 9 and are therefore analyzed and rejected based upon apparatus claims 7 and 9 respectively.
Claim(s) 5, 6, 15 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lim et al. (US PGPUB 20220055527) in view of Guidi (US PGPUB 20200207252).
[Claim 5]
Lim fails to teach wherein the shutter is a global shutter. However Guidi teaches that in cases where the illumination modules 120 are operated in synchronization with the camera 110, the respective image sensor 116 of the camera 110 could be a global shutter-type image sensor (e.g., an image sensor that captures light from an entire area of field of view simultaneously) or a rolling shutter-type image sensor (e.g., an image sensor that scans portions of the field of view in a sequential manner, such as in a line-by-line fashion). For global shutter-type image sensors, the illumination modules 120 could be triggered to illuminate the scene at the same time as the image capture is triggered at the image sensor 116. The illumination provided from the illumination modules 120 could end after an exposure time has elapsed (Paragraph 62) in order to avoid the jelly effect and produces clear images even for high-speed moving objects.
Therefore taking the combined teachings of Lim and Guidi, it would be obvious to one skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to have been motivated to have wherein the shutter is a global shutter in order to avoid the jelly effect and produces clear images even for high-speed moving objects.
[Claim 6]
Lim fails to teach wherein the shutter is a rolling shutter. However Guidi teaches that in the case of a rolling shutter-type image sensor, the illumination modules 120 could be triggered to begin illuminating the scene when the image capture is triggered, but the illumination level will generally be maintained until all of the rows of the image sensor have been scanned. In such scenarios, the illumination modules 120 could be kept on (e.g., illuminated) for an exposure time+(a number of rows*readout time per row) (potentially plus some buffering time) because the rolling shutter exposure has a price advantage, its noise is less, and the image is clearer, so it is widely used.
Therefore taking the combined teachings of Lim and Guidi, it would be obvious to one skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to have been motivated to have wherein the shutter is a rolling shutter in order to have a price advantage, less noise, clear image, so it is widely used.
[Claims 15, 16]
These are method claims corresponding to apparatus claims 5 and 6 respectively and are therefore analyzed and rejected based upon apparatus claims 5 and 6 respectively.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to YOGESH K AGGARWAL whose telephone number is (571)272-7360. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 9:30-6.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Sinh Tran can be reached at 5712727564. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/YOGESH K AGGARWAL/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2637