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 .
DETAILED ACTION
Claims 1–7 have been submitted for examination.
Claims 1–3 and 6–7 have been examined and rejected.
Claims 4–5 are objected to.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4–5 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.
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 of this title, 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.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 1–3 and 6–7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Dal Mutto et al. (US 2020/0372625) in view of Zhang (US 2020/0213533).
Regarding claims 1, 6, and 7, Dal Mutto discloses:
A display control method (Dal Mutto, ¶ [0022], “a processor and memory storing instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to: control the scanner system to capture visual information of an object;”) comprising: projecting, by a projector, a first pattern image onto a projection surface; (Dal Mutto, ¶ [0079], “Methods exist that provide additional illumination by projecting a pattern that is designed to improve or optimize the performance of block matching algorithm that can capture small 3-D details such as the one described in U.S. Pat. No. 9,392,262 “System and Method for 3-D Reconstruction Using Multiple Multi-Channel Cameras,” issued on Jul. 12, 2016, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference. Another approach projects a pattern that is purely used to provide a texture to the scene and particularly improve the depth estimation of texture-less regions by disambiguating portions of the scene that would otherwise appear the same.”) acquiring a captured image by capturing an image of the first pattern image with a camera; (Dal Mutto, ¶ [0045], “The visual information may be acquired using a visual acquisition system (e.g., one or more cameras), and the information collected by such system is processed in order to solve inspection tasks which are characterized by a combination of simple decisions.”) identifying a first region that is a region that fails to be normally detected out of the first pattern image based on the captured image; and (Dal Mutto, ¶ [0082], “Active projection sources can also be classified as projecting static patterns, e.g., patterns that do not change over time, and dynamic patterns, e.g., patterns that do change over time. In both cases, one aspect of the pattern is the illumination level of the projected pattern. This may be relevant because it can influence the depth dynamic range of the depth camera system. For example, if the optical illumination is at a high level, then depth measurements can be made of distant objects (e.g., to overcome the diminishing of the optical illumination over the distance to the object, by a factor proportional to the inverse square of the distance) and under bright ambient light conditions. However, a high optical illumination level may cause saturation of parts of the scene that are close-up. On the other hand, a low optical illumination level can allow the measurement of close objects, but not distant objects.”)
Dal Mutto does not explicitly teach “displaying a second pattern image that is the first pattern image so processed that the first region is distinguishable from a second region that is a region excluding the first region out of the first pattern image.”.
In a similar field of endeavor Zhang teaches:
displaying a second pattern image that is the first pattern image so processed (Zhang, ¶ [0118], “Secondly, a phase recovery is performed. The structured light camera 122 may be configured to calculate the modulated phase based on the four captured images of modulated stripes (i.e., structured light images). The phase image obtained here is a truncated phase image. This is because that the result of the four-step phase shift algorithm is calculated by an arctangent function such that the phase of the modulated structured light is limited in a range of [−π, π]. That is, whenever the modulated phase is outside the range of [−π, π], the phase may be converted to this range by resetting the phase. Principle value of the resultant phase is illustrated in FIG. 11C.”)
that the first region is distinguishable from a second region that is a region excluding the first region out of the first pattern image. (Zhang, ¶ [0117], “The structured light camera 122 may capture the image illustrated on the left of FIG. 11B, and simultaneously the image of stripes on a reference surface as illustrated on the right of FIG. 11B are read.”)
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to combine the system for generating a projection image for analysis as taught by Dal Mutto with the system for calculating phase information based on captured images as taught by Zhang, the motivation is “to obtain a three-dimensional model of the object to be measured” as taught by Zhang (¶ [0120]).
Regarding claim 2, the combination of Dal Mutto and Zhang teaches:
The display control method according to claim 1, wherein displaying the second pattern image includes displaying a portion of the second pattern image that is contained in the first region in a first color, (Dal Mutto, ¶ [0057], “The visual information may include the images captured by the scanning system (e.g., monochrome or grayscale, color, and depth map images) and may also include a 3-D model generated by the 3-D model generation module 200 based on the images captured of the object by the scanning system 99.”) and displaying a portion of the second pattern image (Zhang, ¶ [0118], “Secondly, a phase recovery is performed. The structured light camera 122 may be configured to calculate the modulated phase based on the four captured images of modulated stripes (i.e., structured light images). The phase image obtained here is a truncated phase image. This is because that the result of the four-step phase shift algorithm is calculated by an arctangent function such that the phase of the modulated structured light is limited in a range of [−π, π]. That is, whenever the modulated phase is outside the range of [−π, π], the phase may be converted to this range by resetting the phase. Principle value of the resultant phase is illustrated in FIG. 11C.”) that is contained in the second region in a second color different from the first color. (Zhang, ¶ [0107], “after the structured light projector 121 projects the structured light of a certain pattern on the face and body of the current user, the structured light image modulated by the current user is formed on the surface of the face and body of the current user. The structured light camera 122 may be configured to capture the structured light image modulated and demodulate the structured light image to obtain the depth image. The pattern of the structured light may be laser stripes, Gray code, sinusoidal stripes, non-uniform speckles, and the like.”)
Regarding claim 3, the combination of Dal Mutto and Zhang teaches:
The display control method according to claim 1, wherein displaying the second pattern image includes displaying the second pattern image (Zhang, ¶ [0118], “Secondly, a phase recovery is performed. The structured light camera 122 may be configured to calculate the modulated phase based on the four captured images of modulated stripes (i.e., structured light images). The phase image obtained here is a truncated phase image. This is because that the result of the four-step phase shift algorithm is calculated by an arctangent function such that the phase of the modulated structured light is limited in a range of [−π, π]. That is, whenever the modulated phase is outside the range of [−π, π], the phase may be converted to this range by resetting the phase. Principle value of the resultant phase is illustrated in FIG. 11C.”) contained in the first region in a display mode according to a cause of the failure. (Dal Mutto, ¶ [0079], “Methods exist that provide additional illumination by projecting a pattern that is designed to improve or optimize the performance of block matching algorithm that can capture small 3-D details such as the one described in U.S. Pat. No. 9,392,262 “System and Method for 3-D Reconstruction Using Multiple Multi-Channel Cameras,” issued on Jul. 12, 2016, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference. Another approach projects a pattern that is purely used to provide a texture to the scene and particularly improve the depth estimation of texture-less regions by disambiguating portions of the scene that would otherwise appear the same.”)
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MICHAEL B PIERORAZIO whose telephone number is (571)270-3679. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday - Thursday, 8am - 5pm.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Nasser Goodarzi can be reached on 5712704195. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/MICHAEL B. PIERORAZIO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2426
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