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 .
Claims 1-19 filed on September 11, 2024 are pending.
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.
Claims 1-8, 10, 11, 14, 16-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as anticipated by Caporale (US 2022/0035010 A1, Published February 3, 2022).
As to claim 1, Caporale discloses a Time-of-Flight system of the photon counting type (Caporale at Fig. 1, lidar system 100; ¶ [0085] discloses “The detectors 110d include time-of-flight sensors (for example, an array of single-photon detectors, such as SPADs). ”)
comprising circuitry configured to generate illumination pulses and to record the reflected illumination pulses (Caporale at Fig. 1, emitter array 115 and detector array 110; ¶ [0085)
in recording time slots within a recoding period (Caporale at Fig. 1C; ¶ [0100])
with variable time shifts between the illumination pulses and the recording time slots (Caporale at Fig. 3, ¶ [0095] discloses “That is, some embodiments described herein can utilize range strobing (i.e., biasing the SPADs to be activated and deactivated for durations or windows of time over the emitter cycle, at variable delays with respect to the firing of the emitter (e.g., a laser), thus capturing reflected signal photons corresponding to specific distance subranges at each window/frame) to limit the amount of memory required to store time-of-arrival information.”).1
As to claim 2, Caporale discloses the Time-of-Flight system of claim 1, wherein the circuitry is configured to acquire, during a recording period, a photon counting histogram, each bin of the photon counting histogram corresponding to recording time slots of the recording period (Caporale at Fig. 1C, 2; ¶ [0100]-[0103]).
As to claim 3, Caporale discloses the Time-of-Flight system of claim 1, wherein the circuitry is configured to acquire frames comprising recording periods (Caporale at Fig. 1C; ¶ [0100]).
As to claim 4, Caporale discloses the Time-of-Flight system of claim 1, wherein the circuitry is configured to acquire, for each frame, subframes, wherein each subframe is a collection of recording periods with the same time shift (Caporale at Figs. 1C, subframes are composed of laser cycles; ¶ [0100]).
As to claim 5, Caporale discloses the Time-of-Flight system of claim 1, wherein the illumination pulse duration is at least as long as the longest time shift increment (Caporale at Figs. 3, 10; ¶ [0113], [0136]).
As to claim 6, Caporale discloses the Time-of-Flight system of claim 1, wherein the circuitry is configured to control the time shift within the recording period by shifting the illumination onset (Caporale at Fig. 10; ¶ [0136]).
As to claim 7, Caporale discloses the Time-of-Flight system of claim 1, wherein the circuitry is configured to control the time shift within the recording period by shifting the recording time slot (Caporale at Fig. 3; ¶ [0113]).
As to claim 8, Caporale discloses the Time-of-Flight system of claim 4, wherein the illumination pulses for the subframes are defined based on a target equivalent pulse of the corresponding frame such that the illumination pulses of the subframes are equal to the target equivalent pulses of the frame (Caporale at Fig. 3, pulse periods would be equivalent to two times PW).
As to claim 10, Caporale discloses the Time-of-Flight system of claim 1, wherein the circuitry comprises a Photon Counting ToF sensor configured to record the reflected illumination pulses (Caporale at Fig. 1A, detector array 110; ¶ [0085], [0090]).
As to claim 11, Caporale discloses the Time-of-Flight system of claim 1, wherein the circuitry comprises an active illuminator (Caporale at Fig. 1A, emitter array 115).
As to claim 14, Caporale discloses the Time-of-Flight system of claim 1, wherein the circuitry comprises a programmable delay generator configured to delay the reference clock of histogram recording (Caporale at Fig. 3; ¶ [0095], [0113]).
As to claim 16, Caporale discloses the Time-of-Flight system of claim 1, wherein the circuitry is configured to perform a ToF delay computation based on the principle of binning, where each bin corresponds to a recording time slot of the frame (Caporale at Fig. 1C).2
As to claim 17, Caporale discloses the Time-of-Flight system of claim 16, wherein the recording time slots are defined by a record trigger signal (Caporale at Fig. 1C, strobe signal).
As to claim 18, Caporale discloses the Time-of-Flight system of claim 1, wherein the circuitry is configured to generate illumination pulses and to record respective reflected illumination pulses in recording time slots within respective recoding periods with variable time shifts between the illumination pulses and the recording time slots (Caporale at Figs. 1, 3; ¶ [0085], [0095]).
As to claim 19, Caporale discloses a method comprising generating illumination pulses and recording respective reflected illumination pulses in recording time slots within respective recoding periods (Caporale at Figs. 1, 3) with variable time shifts between the illumination pulses and the recording time slots (Caporale at Fig. 3, ¶ [0095] discloses “That is, some embodiments described herein can utilize range strobing (i.e., biasing the SPADs to be activated and deactivated for durations or windows of time over the emitter cycle, at variable delays with respect to the firing of the emitter (e.g., a laser), thus capturing reflected signal photons corresponding to specific distance subranges at each window/frame) to limit the amount of memory required to store time-of-arrival information.”).3.
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 9 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Caporale (US 2022/0035010 A1, Published February 3, 2022) in view of Webster (US 2019/0132537 A1, Published May 2, 2019).
As to claim 9, Caporale discloses the Time-of-Flight system of claim 8.
Caporale does not expressly disclose that the illumination pulses for the subframes are, compared to a target pulse, short pulses with increased pulse power.
However, Webster discloses that the illumination pulses for the subframes are, compared to a target pulse, short pulses with increased pulse power (Webster at Fig. 1, second pulses 108 as compared to first pulses 106; ¶ [0015]).
Caporale discloses a base LIDAR system upon which the claimed invention is an improvement. Webster discloses a comparable LIDAR system which has been improved in the same way as the claimed invention. Hence, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify or add to Caporale the teachings of Webster for the predictable result of creating 3D images in real time (Webster at ¶ [0002]).
Claim 13 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Caporale (US 2022/0035010 A1, Published February 3, 2022) in view of Steigmann (US 20200174120 A1, Published June 4, 2020).
As to claim 13, Caporale discloses the Time-of-Flight system of claim 12.
Caporale does not expressly disclose that the programmable delay generator is configured to delay the illumination pulse trigger signal as function of the subframe.
However, Steigmann does disclose that the programmable delay generator is configured to delay the illumination pulse trigger signal as function of the subframe (Steigmann at Figs. 7-8; ¶ [0071]-[0072])
Caporale discloses a base LIDAR system upon which the claimed invention is an improvement. Steigmann discloses a comparable LIDAR system which has been improved in the same way as the claimed invention. Hence, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify or add to Caporale the teachings of Steigmann for the predictable result of improving resistance to other LIDAR systems, external noise, or LIDAR “spoofing.” (Steigmann at ¶ [0072]).
Claim 12, 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Caporale (US 2022/0035010 A1, Published February 3, 2022).
As to claim 12, Caporale discloses the Time-of-Flight system of claim 1, wherein the circuitry comprises a programmable delay generator which is configured to delay an illumination pulse trigger signal (Caporale at Figs. 1, 3. While Caporale does contemplate a delay generator, Caporale does expressly disclose a programmable delay generator. However, Examiner takes an official notice that programmable delay generators are well-known in the art).
As to claim 15, Caporale discloses the Time-of-Flight system of claim 1, wherein the circuitry comprises a programmable delay generator configured to modify a trigger for SPAD array recording (Caporale at Figs. 1C, 3; ¶ [0095]. While Caporale does contemplate a delay generator, Caporale does expressly disclose a programmable delay generator. However, Examiner takes an official notice that programmable delay generators are well-known in the art.)
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Haase (DE 102019201739 A1, Published April 13, 2020 – translation attached) is made of record for its relevance to claims 1, 19 by its disclosure of the following at Page 4:
“The control unit 130 is designed to vary a time difference between the time of emission and the start time of the detection period for at least two measurements of the plurality of measurements.”
Jessing (US 2022/0163645 A1, Filed on March 18, 2020) is made of record for its relevance to claim 16 by its disclosure of the following at Fig 1 and ¶ [0033]:
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“[0033] FIG. 3 is a plot of a histogram that illustrates delay time counts recorded by different delay time counters, such as delay time counters 110 shown in FIG. 1. In particular, the histogram represents the distribution of delay time values recorded by the different delay time counters 110. The vertical axis represents the number of counts and the horizontal axis (labeled “Bin#”) represents the different delay time values. So, for example, in the histogram shown in FIG. 3, the total number of bins is 32 meaning that there are 32 different delay time values (including ranges of values) that can be identified by the circuit 100. In the example of FIG. 3, the total number of counts rarely exceeds 20. In general, these counts may be due to noise, e.g., shot noise, rather than a true indicator of the delay time between an emitted and detected pulse. In contrast, a bin located at position 19 in the histogram shows a high number of counts (e.g., greater than 60) indicating that a large number of delay times having the value associated with bin 19 were recorded. As explained herein, the TOF monitoring circuit 100 may be configured to evaluate each bin to determine whether a threshold has been reached and, if so, whether one or more other conditions have been satisfied before determining a distance to the object.”
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Sanjiv D Patel whose telephone number is (571)270-5731. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday, 9:00 am - 5:00 pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, William Boddie can be reached at 571-272-0666. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Sanjiv D. Patel/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2625
08/03/2026
1 See also Haase in Conclusion Section below.
2 See also Jessenig in Conclusion Section below.
3 See also Haase in Conclusion Section below.
Prosecution Insights