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) 1-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over CA3136030A1 “Zhang” (IDS) in view of US2022353548A1 “Oh”
Regarding claim 1, ZHANG/OH, for the same motivation of combination, discloses a method for point cloud coding (ZHANG, Fig. 2D, ¶ 10), comprising: determining, for a conversion (ZHANG, ¶ 26, i.e. All the nodes in parent-level occupancy may be coded and they can be used as contexts in current level. The parent-node-level context accessing method may differ for each child node with index i) between a current frame of a point cloud sequence (ZHANG, ¶ 25, According to one or more embodiments, suppose the octree is traversed in the breadth-first order. Six neighboring nodes of current node can be utilized as the parent-node-level context installation. The block in center may be the current node and the other six blocks are may be nearest neighbors where their distance to the current node is 1 block unit) and a bitstream (as cited above, i.e. ZHANG, ¶ 10) of the point cloud sequence (ZHANG, ¶ [0020] Referring now to FIG. 2A, a diagram of an octree structure 200A is depicted. In TMC13, if the octree geometry codec is used, the geometry encoding proceeds as follows. First, a cubical axis-aligned bounding box B is defined by two points (0,0,0) and (2'1, 2', 2'1), where 2' defines the size of B and M is specified in the bitstream. The octree structure 200A is then built by recursively subdividing B. At each stage, a cube is subdivided into 8 sub-cubes. An 8-bit code, namely the occupancy code, is then generated by associating a 1-bit value with each sub-cube in order to indicate whether it contains points (i.e., full and has value 1) or not (i.e., empty and has value 0). Only full sub-cubes with a size greater than 1 (i.e., non-voxels) are further subdivided), at least one neighbour sub-node of a current node of the current frame (ZHANG, ¶ 0031] Referring now to FIG. 2F, a block diagram 200F of parent-node-level contexts is depicted. According to one or more embodiments, the number of parent-level neighbors can be changed. For example, each child node may only utilize 6 nearest parent-level neighbors. 8 sub-figures represent the parent-node-level context accessing method for ith child node (i =0,1, ... ,7) of the current coded node. In each sub-figure, the current coded node is highlighted in dark gray and the smaller sub-block within the current node is the ith child node (i = 0,1, each child node has different position relative to current node. The parent-node-level context accessing method is different for each child node depending on its relative position to the current node. When coding the ith child node (i = 0,1, ...,7), only 6 adjacent nodes to the ith child node in Date recue/date received 2021-10-26 parent-level are utilized as contexts. The 6 adjacent nodes to the ith child node may include 3 nodes that share a same face with the child node and 3 nodes that share a same edge. Compared to FIG. 2D, the node that shares a same vertex with child node may not be used in this case), a node representing a spatial partition (as cited above, i.e. see ZHANG, Fig. 2D) of the current frame, a sub-node being a portion of a node (as cited above, see ZHANG, Fig. 2D); determining first attribute information (ZHANG, ¶ 10) of a sub-node (see ZHANG, Fig. 2D) of the current node (Zhang ¶ [0027] Referring now to FIG. 2E, a block diagram 200E of parent-level neighbors of a current coded node is depicted. In one or more embodiments, when coding the ith child node (i = 0,1, ... ,7), the 7 adjacent nodes to the ith child node in parent-level are utilized as contexts. The 7 adjacent nodes to the ith child node include 3 nodes that share a same face with the child node and 3 nodes that share a same edge and 1 node that shares a same vertex. Since different child nodes Date recue/date received 2021-10-26 refer to different sets of parent nodes, when coding current node, 26 parent-level neighboring nodes are used in total. Compared to using only 6 parent-level neighboring nodes, utilizing 26 parent-level neighboring nodes leverages much more information)
It is noted that ZHANG is silent about the first and second attributes and the operation of the two parameters as claimed.
However, OH discloses the conversion (OH, ¶ 116) based on at least one second attribute information (OH, ¶ 127) of the at least one neighbour sub-node (as cited above, i.e. The predicted attribute (or attribute value) according to the embodiments is set to the average of values obtained by multiplying the attributes (or attribute values) (e.g., color, reflectance, etc.) of neighbor points set in the predictor of each point by a weight (or weight value) calculated based on the distance to each neighbor point. …); and performing the conversion (OH, ¶ 116, … or perform entropy encoding (inter encoding) based on the occupancy code of the previous frame….) based on the first attribute information.
Both ZHANG and OH teach systems with encoding system using point cloud, and those systems are comparable to that of the instant application. Because the two cited references are analogous to the instant application, it 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, to include in the ZHANG disclosure, wight the contribution from the sub-note, as taught by OH. Such inclusion would have increased the usefulness of the system by processing point cloud data with high efficiency, and would have been consistent with the rationale of combining prior art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results to show a prima facie case of obviousness (MPEP 2143(I)(A)) under KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 127 S. Ct. 1727, 82 USPQ2d 1385, 1395-97 (2007).
Regarding claim 2, ZHANG/OH, for the same motivation of combination, further discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the at least one neighbour sub-node (as cited above, see ZHANG, ¶ 27) of the current node comprises a plurality of sub-nodes of a neighbour node (ZHANG, Fig. 2E, ¶ 27) of the current node.
Regarding claim 3, ZHANG/OH, for the same motivation of combination, further discloses the method of claim 2, wherein the neighbour node (as cited above, ZHANG, i.e. parental-level neightbors of a current coded node) shares at least one of the following with the sub-node of the current node: a face, an edge or a vertex (ZHANG, ¶ 27), and/or wherein the neighbour node shares at least one of the following with the current node: a face, an edge or a vertex (as cited above, i.e. and ZHANG, ¶ 27).
Regarding claim 4, ZHANG/OH, for the same motivation of combination, further discloses the method of claim 2, further comprising: revising third attribute information (ZHANG, as cited above attributes, i.e. color, reflectance) of the neighbour node based on the at least one second attribute information of the at least one neighbour sub-node (OH, as cited above, attribute revision via neighbors).
Regarding claim 5, ZHANG/OH, for the same motivation of combination, further discloses the method of claim 4, wherein revising the third attribute information of the neighbour node comprises: if a neighbour sub-node of the at least one neighbour sub-node shares at least one of the following with the sub-node of the current node: a face, an edge, or a vertex (ZHANG, see classification by face/edge/vertex), revising the third attribute information (OH, revision citation).
Regarding claim 6, ZHANG/OH, for the same motivation of combination, further discloses the method of claim 4, wherein revising the third attribute information of the neighbour node comprises: replacing the third attribute information (see rejection of claim 1 and citation below) with the at least one second attribute information (OH, replacement as cited above).
Regarding claim 7, ZHANG/OH, for the same motivation of combination, further discloses the method of claim 1, wherein a processing operation is applied to the at least one neighbour sub-node (see ZHANG, parental-level occupancy citation and used as context in current level) of the current node before being applied to the sub-node of the current node (ZHANG, as cited above, parental level processing before current level).
Regarding claim 8, ZHANG/OH, for the same motivation of combination, further discloses the method of claim 7, wherein the processing operation comprises one of:an encoding operation, or a decoding operation (as cited above, OH entropy encoding).
Regarding claim 9, ZHANG/OH, for the same motivation of combination, further discloses the method of claim 7, wherein the processing operation comprises one of:a transformation operation, or an inverse transformation operation (see OH, point cloud citation and entropy encoding citation).
Regarding claim 10, ZHANG/OH, for the same motivation of combination, further discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the at least one neighbour sub-node of the current node share at least one of the following with the sub-node of the current node: a face, an edge or a vertex (as cited above, ZHANG, i.e 7 adjacent nodes citation), and/or wherein the at least one neighbour sub-node of the current node share at least one of the following with the current node: a face, an edge or a vertex (see rejection of claim 3).
Regarding claim 11, ZHANG/OH, for the same motivation of combination, further discloses the method of claim 1, wherein first information regarding whether to use a prediction of the at least one attribute information of the at least one neighbour sub-node during the conversion is included in the bitstream (as cited above, see OH entropy coding).
Regarding claim 12, ZHANG/OH, for the same motivation of combination, further discloses the method of claim 1, further comprising: determining first information regarding whether to use a prediction of the at least one attribute information of the at least one neighbour sub-node during the conversion (OH, ¶ 104).
Regarding claim 13, ZHANG/OH, for the same motivation of combination, further discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the at least one neighbour sub-node comprises a plurality of neighbour sub-nodes (ZHANG, ¶ 40), and second information regarding a target neighbour sub-node in the plurality of neighbour sub-nodes is included in the bitstream (ZHANG, ¶ 20), a prediction of second attribute information of the target neighbour sub-node being used during the conversion (ZHANG, ¶ 21).
Regarding claim 14, ZHANG/OH, for the same motivation of combination, further discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the at least one neighbour sub-node comprises a plurality of neighbour sub-nodes, and the method further comprises: determining (ZHANG, i.e. multiple neighbor, encode will select accordingly) second information regarding a target neighbour sub-node in the plurality of neighbour sub-nodes, a prediction of second attribute information of the target neighbour sub-node being used during the conversion (see rejection of claim 13).
Regarding claim 15, ZHANG/OH, for the same motivation of combination, further discloses the method of claim 1, wherein a first neighbour sub-node of the at least one neighbour sub-node is adjacent to the current node (see citation above, i.e. ZHANG, adjacent notes).
Regarding claim 16, ZHANG/OH, for the same motivation of combination, further discloses the method of claim 1, wherein a second neighbour sub-node of the at least one neighbour sub-node is non-adjacent to the current node (ZHANG, ¶ 27).
Regarding claim 17, ZHANG/OH, for the same motivation of combination, further discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the conversion includes encoding the current frame into the bitstream (ZHANG, see conversion citation), and/orwherein the conversion includes decoding the current frame from the bitstream (OH, see entropy encoding citation).
Regarding claim 18, ZHANG/OH, for the same motivation of combination, discloses an apparatus for processing point cloud data comprising a processor and a non-transitory memory with instructions thereon, wherein the instructions upon execution by the processor, cause the processor to: determine, for a conversion between a current frame of a point cloud sequence and a bitstream of the point cloud sequence, at least one neighbour sub-node of a current node of the current frame (see rejection of claim 1), a node representing a spatial partition of the current frame, a sub-node being a portion of a node (see rejection of claim 1),; determine first attribute information of a sub-node of the current node based on at least one second attribute information of the at least one neighbour sub-node (see rejection of claim 1),; and perform the conversion based on the first attribute information (see rejection of claim 1),.
Regarding claim 19, ZHANG/OH, for the same motivation of combination, discloses an non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing instructions that cause a processor to: determine, for a conversion between a current frame of a point cloud sequence and a bitstream of the point cloud sequence, at least one neighbour sub-node of a current node of the current frame (see rejection of claim 1), a node representing a spatial partition of the current frame, a sub-node being a portion of a node (see rejection of claim 1); determine first attribute information of a sub-node of the current node based on at least one second attribute information of the at least one neighbour sub-node (see rejection of claim 1); and perform the conversion based on the first attribute information (see rejection of claim 1).
Regarding claim 20, ZHANG/OH, for the same motivation of combination, further discloses a non-transitory computer-readable recording medium storing a bitstream of a point cloud sequence which is generated by a method performed by a point cloud processing apparatus, wherein the method comprises: determining at least one neighbour sub-node of a current node of a current frame of the point cloud sequence, a node representing a spatial partition of the current frame, a sub-node being a portion of a node; determining first attribute information of a sub-node of the current node based on at least one second attribute information of the at least one neighbour sub-node; and generating the bitstream based on the first attribute information (see rejection of claim 1).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
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/FRANK F HUANG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2485