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
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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 1-2, 6-9, 13-15,19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Roerig (US 12,618, 223) in view of Medagoda (US 2019/0375450)
As to claim 1 Roerig an autonomous vehicle (AV), comprising:
a vehicle body comprising a first real-time kinematic positioning (RTK) global positioning system (GPS) receiver with two or more antennas (Column 6 lines 43-49-“In addition, a cabin or other portion of the chassis may include one or more sensors to provide relative or absolute location and/or direction information (e.g., one or more GPS receivers, such as multiple GPS receivers at known locations on the chassis to in combination provide directional information for the chassis;”);
a vehicle component comprising a second RTK GPS receiver with two or more antennas, the vehicle body and the vehicle component coupled via a pivoting joint (Column 6 lines 43-49-“In addition, a cabin or other portion of the chassis may include one or more sensors to provide relative or absolute location and/or direction information (e.g., one or more GPS receivers, such as multiple GPS receivers at known locations on the chassis to in combination provide directional information for the chassis;”); and
a controller configured to:
autonomously perform a vehicle movement based on the determined orientation (Column 41 lines 55-Coluimn 42 lines 1-4 “After block 412, the routine continues to block 414, where it determines whether to implement safety monitoring operations during fully autonomous operations, or to instead implement safety monitoring operations in a semi-autonomous manner that is based in part on input from at least one human operator—in other embodiments and situations, only one of the two types of safety monitoring operations may be performed. If it is determined to implement safety monitoring for fully autonomous operations, the routine continues to block 416, where it obtains information about one or more tasks to be performed, optionally along with one or more target destination locations and/or orientations/directions different from a current location and orientation/direction of the vehicle, and with the task(s) to be performed at the current originating location and/or at the target destination location(s) and/or at one or more intermediate locations between the originating and destination locations.”).
Roerig does not explicitly disclose determine a rotation of the vehicle component around the pivoting joint relative to the vehicle body using an angular difference between the first heading information and the second heading information
Medagoda teaches access first heading information received from the first RTK GPS receiver and second heading information received form the second RTK GPS receiver (Paragraph 34 “Vehicle sensors 150 and implement sensors 152 may include any combination of global positioning system (GPS) receivers and inertial sensors, such as gyroscopes and accelerometers. Vehicle sensors 150 may generate any combination of navigation signals that identify a state of vehicle 100, such as latitudinal and longitudinal positions, heading, speed, steering angle, pitch, roll, yaw, etc. Implement sensors 152 generate similar state information for implement 104.”, Figure 4 “150”, “152”)
Medagoda teaches determine a rotation of the vehicle component around the pivoting joint relative to the vehicle body using an angular difference between the first heading information and the second heading information (Paragraph 47 “Heading errors refer to the difference in heading between the vehicle and trailer relative to the desired path. If the vehicle or trailer is travelling parallel with the desired path, their respective heading errors will be zero. Cross-track error refers to the lateral position offset of the trailer to the desired path. If the trailer is either left or right of the path, the cross-track will be non-zero. The trailer is travelling on-line when both the heading errors and cross-track errors are zeros. Vehicle curvature error is the amount of curvature demand applied by the vehicle to steer the vehicle onto the desired path.”);
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill to modify Roerig to include the teachings of determining the rotation of the vehicle component around the pivoting joint for the purpose of determining heading errors.
As to claim 2 Roerig discloses an autonomous vehicle wherein accessing first heading information received from the first RTK GPS receiver and second heading information received from the second RTK GPS receiver comprises:
receiving, from a radio frequency (RF) module communicatively coupled to the controller, a first direction vector indicating a direction of the first RTK GPS receiver and a second direction vector indicating a direction of the second RTK GPS receiver (Column 6 lines 43-Column 7 lines 1-19)
As to claim 6 Roerig discloses an autonomous vehicle wherein the vehicle component is a cargo-carrying component rotatable about an axis of the vehicle body(Column 36 lines 50-65).
As to claim 7 Roerig discloses an autonomous vehicle wherein the vehicle component is an arm, boom,trailer, baler, gantry, or chute (Column 36 lines 50-65).
As to claim 8 the claim is interpreted and rejected as in claim 1.
As to claim 9 the claim is interpreted and rejected as in claim 2.
As to claim 13 the claim is interpreted and rejected as in claim 6.
As to claim 14 the claim is interpreted and rejected as in claim 1.
As to claim 15 the claim is interpreted and rejected as in claim 2.
As to claim 19 the claim is interpreted and rejected as in claim 6.
As to claim 20 the claim is interpreted and rejected as in claim 1.
Claims 3-5, 10-12, 16-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Roerig (US 12,618, 223) in view of Medagoda (US 2019/0375450) as applied to claim 1 above, and in further view of Sagalovich (US 2021/0364632)
As to claim 3 Sagalovich teaches an autonomous vehicle wherein the first heading information is determined by:
accessing predetermined coordinates indicating a location of a local base station(Paragraph 4)
applying correction information to first coordinates of the first RTK GPS receiver to obtain adjusted first coordinates (Paragraph 53-54);
calculating a difference between the adjusted first coordinates and the predetermined coordinates of the local base station to obtain a relative position of the first RTK GPS receiver (Paragraph 53-54); and
determining the first heading information corresponding to the vehicle body based on the relative position of the first RTK GPS receiver (Paragraph 55).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill to modify Roerig to include the teachings of determining a first heading based on correction information for the purpose of guiding the work vehicle along the path.
As to claim 4 Roerig discloses an autonomous vehicle wherein determining the second heading information is determined by:
applying the correction information to second coordinates of the second RTK GPS transceiver to obtain adjusted second coordinates (Column 6 lines 16-Columnn 7 lines 1-19);
calculating a difference between the adjusted second coordinates and the predetermined coordinates of the local base station to obtain a relative position of the second RTK GPS receiver (Column 6 lines 16-Columnn 7 lines 1-19); and
determining the second heading corresponding to the vehicle body based on the relative position of the second RTK GPS receiver (Column 14 lines 59-Column 15 lines 1-15).
As to claim 5 Roerig discloses an autonomous vehicle wherein determining the rotation an orientation of the vehicle component relative to the vehicle body using the determined first heading information and the second heading information comprises:
calculating a vector representation of the rotation of the vehicle component relative to the vehicle body by subtracting a vector representation of the first heading information from a vector representation of the second heading information (Column 35 lines 55-Colum 36 lines 1-21); and
calculating an angle of the vector representation of the rotation of the vehicle component in a first plane, the angle indicating an angle of rotation of the vehicle component relative to the vehicle body(Column 35 lines 55-Colum 36 lines 1-21).
As to claim 10 the claim is interpreted and rejected as in claim 3.
As to claim 11 the claim is interpreted and rejected as in claim 4.
As to claim 12 the claim is interpreted and rejected as in claim 5.
As to claim 16 the claim is interpreted and rejected as in claim 3.
As to claim 17 the claim is interpreted and rejected as in claim 4.
As to claim 18 the claim is interpreted and rejected as in claim 5.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1-20 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
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 IMRAN K MUSTAFA whose telephone number is (571)270-1471. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri 9-5.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, James J Lee can be reached at 571-270-5965. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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IMRAN K. MUSTAFA
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 3668
/IMRAN K MUSTAFA/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3668
8/25/2026
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