DETAILED ACTION
In the response to this office action, the examiner respectfully requests that support be shown for language added to any original claims on amendment and any new claims. That is, indicate support for newly added claim language by specifically pointing to page(s) and line numbers in the specification and/or drawing figure(s). This will assist the examiner in prosecuting this application.
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 .
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) 11, 13, 14, and 16 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over He et al. ("Towards Bone-Conducted Vibration Speech Enhancement on Head-Mounted Wearables", PROCEEDINGS OF THE GENETIC AND EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTATION CONFERENCE, ACM PUB27, 18 June 2023, pages 14-27)(see IDS of 06/02/2026).
Regarding claim 11, He discloses a method for transforming microphone data into accelerometer data (see at least section 4 and figure 8), the method comprising:
receiving the microphone data (sections 4.3 and 4.4, discloses a method ("VibVoice") that involves transforming audio data ("microphone data" from the public dataset LibriSpeech) into synthetic accelerometer data. The system "receives" this microphone data from the dataset to perform the augmentation);
applying a device-specific filter to the microphone data to generate first data, the device-specific filter for transforming microphone first data according to characteristics of a device (D1, sections 4.3 and 4.4, discloses applying a filter (the "Bone Conduction Function" or frequency response) to the microphone data (Smic) to transform it into accelerometer-like data (Sacc). This function accounts for the "characteristics of a device" and the user (specifically the "limited sample rate" of the accelerometer on the head-mounted wearables and the physical bone conduction response). The filter transforms the microphone data into what is effectively the "first data", Sacc output by the bone conduction function, see figure 8);
augmenting the first data by adding sensor noise, the sensor noise characterizing noise intrinsic to the device (D1, section 4.4, discloses an added noise term Emic in equation (1)); and
augmenting the first data by adding environmental vibration noise to generate the accelerometer data (bottom of figure 8), the environmental vibration noise defining an environment within which use of the device is simulated (D1, section 4.4, discloses an added noise term Eacc in equation (1)).
Although He is silent as to the order of adding/augmenting the signals, it would have been obvious to the designer that that the signals may be added in any manner, at their preference, including adding the first data to the sensor noise (to generate second data), then adding the result to the environmental vibration noise to generate the final acceleration data. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to serially add the sensor noise and environmental vibrational noise to the first data in the system of He for the benefit of choosing an easily hardware implementable design.
Regarding claim 13, although He does not expressly disclose how the sensor noise is modeled, it would have been obvious to the designer that it may be modeled in any manner at their preference, including white noise. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to further comprise wherein the sensor noise comprises white noise in the system of He for the benefit of choosing an type of noise during implementation that is easy to model.
Regarding claim 14, He discloses wherein the environmental vibration noise simulates vibration noise within an environment in which the device is positioned (all accelerator noise is vibrational noise).
Regarding claim 16, He discloses wherein the microphone data is received from a repository of the microphone data comprising a plurality of instances of the microphone data (section 4.3, "microphone data" from the public dataset LibriSpeech).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-10 and 18-21 are allowed.
Claims 12, 15, and 17 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 an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowability:
Regarding claim 1 the claim as a whole is not obvious given the closest prior art, such as He et al. ("Towards Bone-Conducted Vibration Speech Enhancement on Head-Mounted Wearables", PROCEEDINGS OF THE GENETIC AND EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTATION CONFERENCE, ACM PUB27, 18 June 2023, pages 14-27)(see IDS of 06/02/2026) which teaches “a method for transforming microphone data into accelerometer data, the method comprising:
receiving the microphone data;
…
applying a device-specific filter to the first data to generate second data, the device-specific filter for transforming the first data according to characteristics of a device;
augmenting the second data by adding sensor noise to the second data to generate third data, the sensor noise characterizing noise intrinsic to the device; and
augmenting the third data by adding environmental vibration noise to generate the accelerometer data, the environmental vibration noise defining an environment within which use of the device is simulated”.
However, none of the closest prior art expressly teaches or reasonably suggests the particular combination of “a method for transforming microphone data into accelerometer data, the method comprising:
receiving the microphone data;
applying a phoneme filter to the microphone data to generate first data, the phoneme filter for transforming the microphone data according to at least a phoneme;
….
augmenting the third data by adding environmental vibration noise to generate the accelerometer data“, in combination with the other claim elements, in a manner as claimed.
Independent claim 18 is allowed for analogous reasons as claim 1.
Dependent claims 2-10 and 18-21 are allowed because they contain all the limitations of their independent claim as above.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to DOUGLAS JOHN SUTHERS whose telephone number is (571)272-0563. The examiner can normally be reached M-F, 8 am -5 pm.
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/DOUGLAS J SUTHERS/Examiner, Art Unit 2695
/VIVIAN C CHIN/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2695
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