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 .
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.
Claims 1-4, 11-12, 14-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Grunewald Mayer (U.S. Patent Application Publication 2021/0221485) hereinafter referred to as “GM.”
Regarding Claim 1, GM makes obvious a control method for autonomously berthing a ship using
dynamic positioning, the control method comprising: obtaining ship state information (location of ship) and berth information (location of docking position); setting a first destination point (any of the waypoints 181, 182, 183, ….., 187) adjacent to a berthing region and a second destination point (171) within the berthing region based on the ship state information and the berth information, the second destination point being different from the first destination point.
In paragraph [0178], GM discloses “pre-requisite conditions” for transitioning to a docking phase. These pre-requisite conditions include speed, heading deviation, and lateral deviation. At least this paragraph of GM is a suggestion to one of ordinary skill in the art that certain conditions must be met (or within a certain error threshold) before allowing a process to proceed. Therefore, GM is considered to make obvious controlling a ship to move to the first destination point and perform dynamic positioning operation at the first destination point before controlling the ship to move to the second destination point in the berthing region by adjusting a location and posture of the ship to correspond to the first destination point to maintain an error rate between the first destination point and a current location of the ship less than or equal to a preset value. Also see paragraph [0183] which discusses “once the vessel 121 is positioned within approach zone 180 and meets the pre-requisite conditions” the process may proceed.
Regarding Claim 2, GM discloses “vessel speed must be less than the maximum specified by the approach corridor waypoints.”
Regarding Claim 3, GM discloses waypoints, some of the paths between waypoints appear to be linear and some of the paths in combination appear to be quadratic. Regardless, the shape of the paths is not considered to be a patentable distinction as they would be within the skill level of one of ordinary skill in the art. It is also well known that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, suggesting to one of ordinary skill in the art to use a linear function to minimize fuel usage when thrusting.
Regarding Claim 4, GM discloses “[0169] Configuration of the AVMS requires that sufficient sensors are online and selected, that sufficient thrusters are online and selected, and that a track 170 and destination 171 have been selected.” This is considered to be a suggestion that a berthing region has been displayed to a user for selection. GM does not explicitly disclose the berthing region being determined from camera or LiDAR data. However, GM is replete with usage of wireless communication devices and even discloses the usage of camera data. Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to determine berthing data based on these well known wireless communication devices.
Regarding Claim 11, GMs waypoints are considered to factor in a direction of the berth with respect to the ship.
Regarding Claim 12, GM discloses “[0211] Furthermore, external force information may be determined by the apparatus 120, the force vector may be then combined with the external force information, and the thruster commands determined based on the combination. At least one thruster may be controlled based on the thruster commands. The external force information may comprise e.g. wind information that is detected using a capturing device (e.g. wind sensor), for example.”
Regarding Claim 14, for the reasons stated above, GM makes obvious the claimed control apparatus. Regarding the limitation “maintain and error rate,” GM discloses “[0206] During high speed tracking, the vessel 121 may follow the heading of the track 170 with the necessary heading adjustments to maintain zero cross track error. The heading adjustments will be made using the high-speed steering allocation (e.g. rudders or main azimuth thrusters).”
Regarding Claim 15, GM discloses “[0252] FIG. 5 presents an example block diagram of a computer apparatus 160 in which various embodiments of the present disclosure may be applied. The computer apparatus 160 may be a user equipment (UE), user device or apparatus, such as a mobile terminal, a smart phone, a laptop computer, a desktop computer or other communication device.”
Claims 5-7, 9, 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over GM in view of Bae (KR 20060072293) and Sun (CN 108170976).
As described in the prior office action, Sun discloses calculating a success rate of a ship and
transitioning to a recovery operation when a success rate is too low. As described in the prior office action, Bae discloses using a safety envelope to factor into a ship moving algorithm. As GM is replete with suggestions of an automated algorithm and ensuring success my minimizing errors, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to use a safety envelop as taught by Bae to factor into an error correction algorithm as taught by Sun to minimize the error of GM’s algorithm. It is considered obvious that a “recovery” operation is meant to get an algorithm back to a desired state and then the algorithm will return to its standard operation.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 8 and 10 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. It is the Examiner’s position that rejection of Claim 8 and 10 would require improper hindsight reconstruction using information only gleaned from the instant Application.
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 William J Kelleher whose telephone number is (571)272-7753. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday: 7am-3:30pm.
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William J. Kelleher
Supervisory Patent Examiner
Art Unit 3658
/William Kelleher/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3648
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