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 .
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDSs) submitted on 03/19/2025 and 09/24/2025 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statements are being considered by the examiner.
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) 1-3, 8, 11-18 and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by M. Barnada, C. Conrad, H. Bradler, M. Ochs and R. Mester, "Estimation of automotive pitch, yaw, and roll using enhanced phase correlation on multiple far-field windows," 2015 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV), Seoul, Korea (South), 2015, pp. 481-486, doi: 10.1109/IVS.2015.7225731. referred to as BARNADA hereinafter.
Regarding Claim 1, BARNADA shows a method for image processing (Abstract describes various estimations of posture analysis based on video processing.), comprising:
obtaining at least two frames of road images by an image acquisition component installed on a traveling device (Page 281, Section II describes a image signal at two discrete time steps, t and t-1 taken from an ADAS.);
determining information of posture changing, of the traveling device, between two frames of road images of the at least two frames of road images by using a phase-only correlation method (Page 482, Section II, "We use phase correlation to estimate optical flow…");
and determining posture information of the traveling device based on the information of posture changing and reference posture information of the traveling device (The Abstract describes how the posture [position] changes (via pitch, yaw and roll) based on the above estimations. See section II, equations 17-27 and corresponding text, as well for supporting calculations.).
Regarding claim 2, BARNADA shows the limitations as per Claim 1 above, wherein determining the information of posture changing of the traveling device between the two frames of road images of the at least two frames of road images by using the phase-only correlation method comprises:
determining phase offset information between the two frames of road images based on regions of interest in the two frames of road images (Pages 481-482, discussion surrounding sub-windows or cells; Fig. 1);
and determining the information of posture changing, of the traveling device, between the two frames of road images based on the phase offset information (Pages 483-484, Equations 18-27 calculate this.).
Regarding claim 3, BARNADA shows the limitations as per Claim 2 above, wherein region(s) of interest in each frame of road image is determined by:
determining one or at least two regions of interest in the each frame of road image, wherein at least one of the one or at least two regions of interest has at least one of following characteristics: overlapping with horizon, or comprising a vanishing point (Page 481, Fig. 1, wherein cells of interest are placed horizontally in the middle of the image at and around the vanishing point. For purposes of examination this is being consider as or as an equivalent to the horizon as considered in the art.).
Regarding claim 8, BARNADA shows the limitations as per Claim 4 above, wherein determining the phase offset information between the two frames of road images based on the regions of interest in the two frames of road images comprises:
determining the phase offset information between the two frames of road images based on region(s) of interest in each of the two frames of road images (Fig. 1, Section II, Equations 9-10).
Regarding claim 11, BARNADA shows the limitations as per Claim 2 above, wherein each of the two frames of road images comprises at least two regions of interest (Page 481, Fig. 1), and determining the phase offset information between the two frames of road images based on the region of interests in the two frames of road images comprises:
determining second phase offset information between the two frames of road images based on each set of corresponding regions of interest in the two frames of road images (Page 483, Section II, “We use phase correlation to estimate optical flow since it is possible to make it particularly robust…”; Eq. (9)–(10)), wherein a position of a region of interest, in each set of corresponding regions of interest, in a road image of the region of interest correspond to a position of the other region of interest, in the set of corresponding regions of interest, in a road image of the other region of interest (Fig. 1, Section II);
and selecting one piece of second phase offset information from at least two pieces of second phase offset information as the phase offset information between the two frames of road images (Page 483, Section II, “only those motion vectors d which are compact are going to be used”; Section II, validity tests);
or, determining median phase change information among the at least two pieces of second phase offset information and determining the median phase change information as the phase offset information between the two frames of road images (Page 483, Section II, performing validity checks and leaving one out.);
or, determining an average value of the at least two pieces of second phase offset information and determining the average value as the phase offset information between the two frames of road images (Page 483-484, Equation 21; Section III.A).
Regarding claim 12, BARNADA shows the limitations as per Claim 2 above, wherein at least one region of interest is symmetrical with respect to horizon (Page 481, Fig. 1, wherein cells of interest are placed horizontally in the middle of the image at and around the vanishing point. For purposes of examination this is being consider as or as an equivalent to the horizon as considered in the art.).
Regarding claim 13, BARNADA shows the limitations as per Claim 2 above, wherein a number of pixels of each edge of at least one region of interest is n-th power of 2, n being a positive integer (Fig. 1, cell size is 256 x 128).
Regarding claim 14, BARNADA shows the limitations as per Claim 2 above, wherein determining the phase offset information between the two frames of road images based on the regions of interest in the two frames of road images comprises:
extracting sub-images corresponding to the regions of interest in the two frames of road images respectively to obtain a first sub-image and a second sub-image (Section II.B.2; Fig. 1; Fig. 2);
performing gray-scale processing on the first sub-image and the second sub-image, to obtain a first gray-scale image corresponding to the first sub-image and a second gray-scale image corresponding to the second sub-image, respectively (Section II.B.2, specifically wherein the discussion addresses image signal s(x,t) and spectral processing.);
performing Fourier transform processing on the first gray-scale image and the second gray-scale image respectively (Equations 9-10 and surrounding text.), and performing normalized cross processing on pixels in the processed first gray-scale image and pixels in the processed second gray-scale image, to obtain a processed image (Equation 9);
and performing inverse Fourier transform processing on the processed image (Equation 10), determining a peak position based on a value of each pixel in the processed image (Section II.B.3, equations 10-13), and determining the phase offset information between the two frames of road images based on the peak position (Section II.B.2, Section II.B.3, Equation 10).
Regarding claim 15, BARNADA shows the limitations as per Claim 2 above, further comprising:
updating calibration information of the image acquisition component based on the information of posture changing or the posture information of the traveling device.
Regarding Claim 16, BARNADA shows an electronic device, comprising a memory, a processor, and a computer program stored in the memory and executable by the processor, wherein the processor, when executing the computer program (Page 484 describes a practical implementation as a program using a CPU and from a hard-drive), performs operations comprising:
obtaining at least two frames of road images by an image acquisition component installed on a traveling device (Page 281, Section II describes an image signal at two discrete time steps, t and t-1 taken from an ADAS.);
determining information of posture changing, of the traveling device, between two frames of road images of the at least two frames of road images by using a phase-only correlation method (Page 482, Section II, "We use phase correlation to estimate optical flow…");
and determining posture information of the traveling device based on the information of posture changing and reference posture information of the traveling device (The Abstract describes how the posture [position] changes (via pitch, yaw and roll) based on the above estimations. See section II, equations 17-27 and corresponding text, as well for supporting calculations.).
Regarding claim 17, BARNADA shows the limitations as per Claim 16 above, wherein the processor, when executing the computer program, further performs operations comprises:
determining phase offset information between the two frames of road images based on regions of interest in the two frames of road images (Pages 481-482, discussion surrounding sub-windows or cells; Fig. 1);
and determining the information of posture changing, of the traveling device, between the two frames of road images based on the phase offset information (Pages 483-484, Equations 18-27 calculate this.).
Regarding claim 18, BARNADA shows the limitations as per Claim 17 above, wherein the processor, when executing the computer program, further performs operations comprises:
determining one or at least two regions of interest in each frame of road image, wherein at least one of the one or at least two regions of interest has at least one of following characteristics: overlapping with horizon, or comprising a vanishing point (Page 481, Fig. 1, wherein cells of interest are placed horizontally in the middle of the image at and around the vanishing point. For purposes of examination this is being consider as or as an equivalent to the horizon as considered in the art.).
Regarding Claim 20, BARNADA shows a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, wherein a computer program is stored in the non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, and when the computer program is executed by a processor (Page 484 describes a practical implementation as a program using a CPU and from a hard-drive), the processor is caused to implement operations comprising:
obtaining at least two frames of road images by an image acquisition component installed on a traveling device (Page 281, Section II describes an image signal at two discrete time steps, t and t-1 taken from an ADAS.);
determining information of posture changing, of the traveling device, between two frames of road images of the at least two frames of road images by using a phase-only correlation method (Page 482, Section II, "We use phase correlation to estimate optical flow…");
and determining posture information of the traveling device based on the information of posture changing and reference posture information of the traveling device (The Abstract describes how the posture [position] changes (via pitch, yaw and roll) based on the above estimations. See section II, equations 17-27 and corresponding text, as well for supporting calculations.).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4-7, 9-10 and 19 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
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. U.S. Patent No. 7,388,541 B1 discloses a self-calibrating position location device.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JUSTIN W. RIDER whose telephone number is (571)270-1068. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday, 7.00 am - 4.30 pm.
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JUSTIN W. RIDER
Primary Patent Examiner
Art Unit 2486
/Justin W Rider/Primary Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2486
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