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 .
Priority
The applicant’s claim to priority DE102022133746.4 on 12/16/2022 is acknowledged.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 06/13/2025 complies with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Objections
Claims 13 is objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 13 recites: “The method of claim 11, further comprising:
adapting a driving strategy or driving behavior of the vehicle based on the classified at least one and the determinable probability; and
determining a status of the detected roadworks.”
Wherein the Examiner believes there is a typographical error in the (bolded) claim limitations. For the purposes of compact prosecution, the claimed limitations will be interpreted as:
“The method of claim 11, further comprising:
adapting a driving strategy or driving behavior of the vehicle based on the classified at least one device and the determinable probability; and
determining a status of the detected roadworks.”
As this interpretation aligns with the terminology set in dependent claim 15.
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 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 the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 11-15 and 17-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Rajkumar et al. (20220272448; hereinafter Rajkumar).
Regarding claim 11, Rajkumar teaches a method for detecting roadworks in a vehicle having at least one microphone, the method comprising (Rajkumar: Abstract):
detecting, by the at least one microphone, acoustic signals from an environment of the vehicle at least in one direction of travel (Rajkumar: “an intelligent vehicle requires one or more sensors, in the form of microphones, processing to determine the nature of the sounds picked up by the microphones” ¶ 28);
evaluating, by a computing unit, the detected acoustic signals to classify at least one device used at roadworks as an object emitting at least some of the acoustic signals with a determinable probability (Rajkumar: “Sounds from different sources occupy specific frequency bands. One means of separating and classifying sound sources can be to use their respective frequency bands as a criterion” ¶ 30, “the detected sound sources are classified using a classifier” ¶ 33, “The confidence level may be used by the vehicle to cause the vehicle to react immediately to a sound or to ignore the sound. Sounds having a high confidence level may be acted upon immediately while sounds having a low confidence level, for example, a confidence level below a certain threshold, may be ignored by the vehicle” ¶ 27); and
detecting the roadworks based on the classification of the at least one device used at roadworks (Rajkumar: “when the invention is used in land vehicles, the classifier may be trained for detecting land-based focus sounds, including, but not limited to, car horns, vehicle sirens and train whistles” ¶ 33),
at least one wherein the microphone is outwardly directed from the vehicle (Rajkumar: “The microphones used by the system and method of the present invention can be mounted on the either the exterior or the interior of the vehicle (or both). FIG. 1 shows a first embodiment of the invention in which one or more of microphones 110(a-f) are placed on the exterior of vehicle 105” ¶ 31).
Regarding claim 12, Rajkumar teaches the method of claim 11, wherein the vehicle is operated in an automated driving mode (Rajkumar: “The aural capability can be combined with the outputs of other sensors to enhance the reliability and trustworthiness of alerts generated by an intelligent vehicle, and the responses triggered by an autonomous vehicle” ¶ 26).
Regarding claim 13, Rajkumar teaches the method of claim 11, further comprising:
adapting a driving strategy or driving behavior of the vehicle based on the classified at least one and the determinable probability (Rajkumar: “On an autonomous vehicle, the actuation may slow down, stop or steer the vehicle depending on the context and the nature of the sound” ¶ 13, “The alert/actuation component 370 can take as its inputs the interior and/or exterior sound classes detected and generate alerts, send out actuation commands to alter the vehicle's behavior, for example, to other subsystems of the vehicle control system, or do both” ¶ 42); and
determining a status of the detected roadworks (Rajkumar: “With the incorporation of real-world constraints and physical impossibilities (e.g., the source of a car horn cannot be localized to a location where a building stands, etc.), unlikely hypotheses can be discarded and a constrained localization system reliably identifies the presence of focus sounds near the vehicle and tracks their movements” ¶ 45).
Regarding claim 14, Rajkumar teaches the method of claim 13, wherein the driving behavior is changed such that the vehicle is operated in a degraded mode (Rajkumar: “Actuation on an autonomous vehicle can include, but is not limited to, slowing down, stopping, aborting a lane change, initiating a lane change, speeding up, beginning to move, aborting a turn maneuver at an intersection, initiating a detour path at an intersection, moving to the side of the road, making way for an emergency vehicle, undertaking an evasive maneuver, etc.” ¶ 42, Note: Wherein a degraded mode is described in the Specification as an adapted speed. Therefore, based on the description and under the claimed limitations broadest reasonable interpretation (BRI), the prior art recites analogous limitations that teach of a degraded mode).
Regarding claim 15, Rajkumar teaches the method of claim 11, wherein the roadworks are classified based on the classification of the at least one device and a status of the at least one device is estimated (Rajkumar: “With the incorporation of real-world constraints and physical impossibilities (e.g., the source of a car horn cannot be localized to a location where a building stands, etc.), unlikely hypotheses can be discarded and a constrained localization system reliably identifies the presence of focus sounds near the vehicle and tracks their movements” ¶ 45).
Regarding claim 17, Rajkumar teaches the method of claim 16, wherein the classification of the roadworks further involves using further sensors, wherein the further sensors are at least one camera (Rajkumar: “a camera may provide a visual confirmation of the localization of a horn sound by visualizing a car at a location corresponding to the localization of the horn sound” ¶ 27, see also ¶ 61), at least one radar, or at least one lidar.
Regarding claim 18, Rajkumar teaches the method of claim 17, wherein an environment is recorded by the further sensors and a map stored in the central database is updated (Rajkumar: “after separation, the sound sources are localized in the context of information regarding the environment of the vehicle, for example, but not limited to, a map” ¶ 33, see also ¶ 35, 69, 70).
Regarding claim 19, Rajkumar teaches the method of claim 15, wherein the roadworks are classified regarding features type, dynamics, or activity (Rajkumar: “when the invention is used in land vehicles, the classifier may be trained for detecting land-based focus sounds, including, but not limited to, car horns, vehicle sirens and train whistles. Additional focus sounds may be added by simply providing additional training data to the classifier. The classifier may be trained differently for different types of vehicles” ¶ 33, see also ¶ 61).
Regarding claim 20, Rajkumar teaches a vehicle comprising:
at least one microphone, which is outwardly directed from the vehicle (Rajkumar: “The systems and methods of the present invention, implementing an aural capability for intelligent vehicles” ¶ 25); and
a computing unit coupled to the at least one microphone (Rajkumar: “The software subsystem ... can each include one or more instances of a central processing unit (CPU) ...” ¶ 64),
...
In regards to the remainder of claim 20, the claim recites analogous limitations to previously rejected claim 1, and is therefore rejected under the same premise.
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 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.
Claim(s) 16 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rajkumar in view of Kim et al. (20210107477; hereinafter Kim).
Regarding claim 16, Rajkumar teaches the method of claim 11, further comprising:
forwarding, by the vehicle, the detected roadworks to a central database (Rajkumar: “The compute process 715 may analyze the audible input received from the one or microphones 320 in accordance with the block diagram shown in FIG. 3A and described above, and may generate one or more informational outputs, which may be shared with other software subsystems 615 via communication link 620” ¶ 71)
...
However, Rajkumar fails to teach wherein the central database makes the detected roadworks available to subsequent vehicles.
In a similar field of endeavor, Kim teaches of wherein the central database makes the detected roadworks available to subsequent vehicles (Kim: “The transceiver 201 may receive a danger information broadcast signal transmitted by another vehicle through the V2X communication module, and may transmit a danger information inquiry signal and receive a danger information response signal in response thereto” ¶ 82, see also ¶ 81, 97).
As such, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, at the time of effective filing and with a reasonable expectation for success, to have modified the database system of Rajkumar so that it also includes the element of communicating to subsequent vehicles, as taught by Kim, in order to improve safety between subsequent vehicles (Kim: ¶ 100)
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Dantrey et al. (20220157165) is in the similar field of endeavor as the claimed invention of vehicle acoustic environmental detection.
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/C.P./Examiner, Art Unit 3663
/TYLER J LEE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3663
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