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 .
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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.
Claims 1-3, 10-15, 22 and 25 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ghamisi et al., "Multisource and Multitemporal Data Fusion in Remote Sensing: A Comprehensive Review of the State of the Art" as provided in the applicant’s information disclosure statement in view of Hoshii et al. US2011/0069334 hereinafter referred to as Hoshii.
As per Claim 1, Ghamisi teaches the method to be performed by an electronic device to predict reflectance intensity, the method comprising:
pairing a first
generating a prediction function for the point cloud to perform reflectance intensity prediction based on the first and second tuples, the prediction function being trained using reflectance intensity spectral distributions of a plurality of materials; and (Ghamisi, page 8, right column, “Finally, we define the statistical model framework as including 1) measurement to provide data, as described previously 2) characterization of the data through model fitting 3) prediction of unobserved data, given 2)4) forecasting [26]. Prediction—item 3—can be of the measured property x (e.g., reflectance…”)
determining a third reflectance intensity based on an input of a third wavelength to the prediction function. (Ghamisi, page 8, right column, “Finally, we define the statistical model framework as including 1) measurement to provide data, as described previously 2) characterization of the data through model fitting 3) prediction of unobserved data, given 2)4) forecasting [26]. Prediction—item 3—can be of the measured property x (e.g., reflectance…”)
Ghamisi does not explicitly teach the first tuple including a first reflectance intensity and a first wavelength through which the first reflectance intensity is obtained and the second tuple including a second reflectance intensity and a second wavelength through which the second reflectance intensity is obtained;
Hoshii teaches the first tuple including a first reflectance intensity and a first wavelength through which the first reflectance intensity is obtained and the second tuple including a second reflectance intensity and a second wavelength through which the second reflectance intensity is obtained; (Hoshii, Figure 7, tuple considered to be wavelength, spectral reflectance, pixel value)
Thus it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to implement the teachings of Hoshii into Ghamisi because by organizing information in a smaller format like a tuple of Hoshii will provide essential information for effective processing.
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill to combine the two references to obtain the invention in Claim 1.
As per Claim 2, Ghamisi in view of Hoshii teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the first tuple is from data collected by a first sensor that operates at the first wavelength and the second tuple is from data collected by a second sensor that operates at the second wavelength, wherein the point cloud for the physical region is generated based on a plurality of point clouds that include a first point cloud generated from the data collected by the first sensor and a second point cloud generated from the data collected by the second sensor. (Hoshii, Figure 7, tuple considered to be wavelength, spectral reflectance, pixel value and Ghamisi, p 17, “Data fusion can be performed by different algorithms, such as point based (e.g., iterative closest point), keypoint based (e.g., scale invariant feature transform), surface based (e.g., local planes), or any combination of these [116]. This fusion principle is generally valuable in the merging of point clouds Imagery + Point Cloud Enriched Point Cloud from different sensor types”)
The rationale applied to the rejection of claim 1 has been incorporated herein.
As per Claim 3, Ghamisi in view of Hoshii teaches the method of claim 1, wherein each of the first and second tuples further includes one three-dimensional coordinates of the same or adjacent points, and a value based on one sensor through which corresponding data is collected. Hoshii, Figure 7, tuple considered to be wavelength, spectral reflectance, pixel value and Ghamisi, page 16, Figure 5)
The rationale applied to the rejection of claim 1 has been incorporated herein.
As per Claim 10, Ghamisi in view of Hoshii teaches the method of any of claim 1, further comprising: providing the determined third reflectance intensity as input to a process for localization with respect to the physical region. (Ghamisi, page 8, right column, “Finally, we define the statistical model framework as including 1) measurement to provide data, as described previously 2) characterization of the data through model fitting 3) prediction of unobserved data, given 2)4) forecasting [26]. Prediction—item 3—can be of the measured property x (e.g., reflectance…”)
The rationale applied to the rejection of claim 1 has been incorporated herein.
As per Claim 11, Ghamisi in view of Hoshii teaches the method of any of claim 1, wherein the same or adjacent points represented by the first and second tuples corresponds a same point position in the point cloud, and the first and second wavelengths are different wavelengths. (Ghamisi, page 16, right column and Figure 5, “Point Cloud Level: pixel to point and point to point”, coordinates are paired with intensity, RGB, and class ID and Hoshii, Figure 7, tuple considered to be wavelength, spectral reflectance, pixel value”)
The rationale applied to the rejection of claim 1 has been incorporated herein.
As per Claim 12, Ghamisi in view of Hoshii teaches the method of any of claim 1, wherein the same or adjacent points represented by the first and second tuples are adjacent points in the point cloud for the physical region and the same or adjacent points corresponding to a same material in the physical region. (Ghamisi, page 16, right column and Figure 5, “Point Cloud Level: pixel to point and point to point”, coordinates are paired with intensity, RGB, and class ID and Hoshii, Figure 7, tuple considered to be wavelength, spectral reflectance, pixel value”)
The rationale applied to the rejection of claim 1 has been incorporated herein.
As per Claim 13, Claim 13 claims an electronic device comprising a processor and non-transitory machine-readable storage medium that provides instructions for performing the method as claimed in Claim 1. Therefore the rejection and rationale are analogous to that made in Claim 1.
As per Claim 14, Claim 14 claims the same limitation as Claim 2 and is dependent on a similarly rejected independent claim. Therefore the rejection and rationale are analogous to that made in Claim 2.
As per Claim 15, Claim 15 claims the same limitation as Claim 3 and is dependent on a similarly rejected independent claim. Therefore the rejection and rationale are analogous to that made in Claim 3.
As per Claim 22, Claim 22 claims the same limitation as Claim 10 and is dependent on a similarly rejected independent claim. Therefore the rejection and rationale are analogous to that made in Claim 10.
As per Claim 25, Claim 25 claims a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium that provides instructions for performing the method as claimed in Claim 1. Therefore the rejection and rationale are analogous to that made in Claim 1.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4-9, 16 and 28-29 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.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MING HON whose telephone number is (571)270-5245. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9am - 5pm.
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, Emily Terrell can be reached on 571-270-3717. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/MING Y HON/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2666
Prosecution Insights