CTNF 19/016,841 CTNF 89276 Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status 07-03-aia AIA 15-10-aia The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA. Contents of this Office Action: Explanation of why current claims comply with 35 U.S.C. 101 35 U.S.C. 103 rejections Relevant prior art section Claim Analysis - 35 USC § 101 The present claims comply with 35 U.S.C. 101 because they recite the practical application of using operation data to control the steering of a vehicle. Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103 07-20-aia AIA 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. 07-21-aia AIA Claim (s) 1-19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rahaman, MoParkeR : Multi-objective Parking Recommendation, 2021, in view of Mata, Automatic Parking System Well-designed architectures guarantee Safety in Automated Driving Systems, 2023 . Regarding claims 1, 10, and 11 , Rahaman discloses a method and input/output control device of a vehicle including a sensor that acquires an external situation, a display device that is installed so as to be visually recognizable by an occupant, an input device that receives an operation of the occupant, and a vehicle controller that controls at least steering, the vehicle control method comprising: detecting at least a first parking position and a second parking position based on the external situation acquired by the sensor (Abstract discloses that in this paper, we propose a novel problem called multi-objective parking recommendation. We present a solution by designing a multi-objective parking recommendation engine called MoParkeR that considers various conflicting factors together. Specifically, we utilize a non-dominated sorting technique to calculate a set of Pareto-optimal solutions, consisting of recommended trade off parking spots. See further Figure 4 for explicit display of multiple parking spots on Google Maps. Page 2 section 2 discloses vision-based sensors and physical sensors); displaying the first parking position and a first recommendation degree of the first parking position and the second parking position and a second recommendation degree of the second parking position by the display device (Looking again at Figure 4, as well as Fig. 5 a Google Maps API is displayed with various routes to parking positions, as well as a plurality of recommendation degrees depending on what the user desires. Specifically, walk distance, faire, travel time, likelihood). Rahaman teaches the main focus of the claim – specifically detecting a first and second parking position based on sensor data and displaying that data along with a recommendation. The only difference is that Rahaman has not taken it one step further for implementation in an autonomous vehicle where a user can select the parking spot and the car autonomously drives to the parking position. Specifically, Rahaman does not teach: when the input device receives an operation of selecting one of the first parking position and the second parking position, controlling the at least one steering such that the vehicle travels toward a selected one of the first parking position and the second parking position by the vehicle controller. However, Mata does teach: when the input device receives an operation of selecting one of the first parking position and the second parking position, controlling the at least one steering such that the vehicle travels toward a selected one of the first parking position and the second parking position by the vehicle controller (Pages 4 and 5 disclose a user selecting a parking space on the display of a phone app and the car automatically driving to the parking spot). Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the teachings of Rahaman with Mata so that the user can actually select from the plurality of displayed parking options of Rahaman, a specific parking spot and integrate Rahaman into an autonomous vehicle so that the vehicle can drive itself (i.e. make use of its common functionalities) to the parking position. Regarding claims 2 and 12 , Rahaman discloses: obtaining the first recommendation degree and the second recommendation degree based on a positional relationship between a position of the vehicle and the first parking position and the second parking position at a time point before the display device displays the first parking position and the first recommendation degree, and the second parking position and the second recommendation degree (As discussed in the rejection to claim 1, and shown in Fig. 3, parking sensor data is used. This means sensor data is received, and then the map is generated, making the recommendations based on a time point before the display device displays the positions and recommendations). Regarding claims 3 and 13 , Rahaman discloses obtaining a first route from the position of the vehicle at the time point to the first parking position and a second route from the position of the vehicle at the time point to the second parking position (See Figs. 4 and 5 and Table 1); and obtaining the first recommendation degree and the second recommendation degree based on the first route and the second route (See Table 1). Regarding claims 4 and 14 , Rahaman discloses displaying the first parking position and the first recommendation degree, and the second parking position and the second recommendation degree, and also displaying the first route and the second route by the display device (See Figs. 4, 5, and Table 1). Regarding claims 5 and 15 , Rahaman discloses a first shortest distance to a peripheral obstacle in the first route is larger than a second shortest distance to a peripheral obstacle in the second route (As above, the recommendation is based on distance length. Peripheral obstacle is a very broad term and can be construed as the parking lot itself). Regarding claims 6 and 16 , Rahaman discloses on Page 1, Col. 2 user preferences. This means that the paper encompasses a plurality of user preferences since not everyone has the same preferences. This means that the inputs into the recommendation can be changed. Further, Mata discloses an app with a user interface so it would be obvious to include this app functionality into Rahaman to actually allow the user to input data. Regarding claims 7, 8, 17, and 18 , Rahaman discloses camera (see claim 1 for vision-based sensors) and a touch panel (Mata discloses a phone app with a touch panel). Regarding claims 9 and 19 , neither Rahaman nor Mata explicitly disclose the specific conditions of claim 9 and 19. However, as discussed at length above, Rahaman discloses the functional limitations of using input and preferences to make and display parking recommendations. It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date to simply substitute the claimed condition for any other condition not claimed to achieve the same results. That is, the calculations of Rahaman would be performed the same way whether the input data is distance to the parking lot or distance within the parking lot to an adjacent vehicle. It would take the inputs, perform a calculation, and make a recommendation and it can do this based on any inputs and any numbers. Rahaman even discloses smart sensors to collect data related to parking events (see Page 1, Col. 2). Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the part prior to the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the combination of Rahaman and Mata to include any particular user preference to achieve the same results. Relevant Prior Art Sun, Beyond Prediction: On-street Parking Recommendation using Heterogeneous Graph-based List-wise Ranking, 2023. This reference discusses real-time parking information, existing studies focus on predicting parking availability, which seems an indirect approach to saving drivers' cruising time. In this paper, we first time propose an on-street parking recommendation (OPR) task to directly recommend a parking space for a driver. To this end, a learn-to-rank (LTR) based OPR model called OPR-LTR is built. Specifically, parking recommendation is closely related to the "turnover events" (state switching between occupied and vacant) of each parking space, and hence we design a highly efficient heterogeneous graph called ESGraph to represent historical and real-time meters' turnover events as well as geographical relations; afterward, a convolution-based event-then-graph network is used to aggregate and update representations of the heterogeneous graph. A ranking model is further utilized to learn a score function that helps recommend a list of ranked parking spots for a specific on-street parking query. The method is verified using the on-street parking meter data in Hong Kong and San Francisco. By comparing with the other two types of methods: prediction-only and prediction-then-recommendation, the proposed direct-recommendation method achieves satisfactory performance in different metrics. Extensive experiments also demonstrate that the proposed ESGraph and the recommendation model are more efficient in terms of computational efficiency as well as saving drivers' on-street parking time. Conclusion Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ARYAN E WEISENFELD whose telephone number is (571)272-6602. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9-5. 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, Angela Ortiz can be reached at 5712721206 . 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. ARYAN E. WEISENFELD Primary Examiner Art Unit 3689 /ARYAN E WEISENFELD/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3663 Application/Control Number: 19/016,841 Page 2 Art Unit: 3663 Application/Control Number: 19/016,841 Page 3 Art Unit: 3663 Application/Control Number: 19/016,841 Page 4 Art Unit: 3663 Application/Control Number: 19/016,841 Page 5 Art Unit: 3663 Application/Control Number: 19/016,841 Page 6 Art Unit: 3663 Application/Control Number: 19/016,841 Page 7 Art Unit: 3663 Application/Control Number: 19/016,841 Page 8 Art Unit: 3663
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