Appeal No. 2000-1511
Application 08/671,853
these claims, the examiner’s position that the claimed state
vector is met by any input data is not correct. We agree with
appellants that the applied prior art does not suggest the
selection of a state vector as claimed and the using of that
state vector to select one of a plurality of rule sets as
claimed. Therefore, we do not sustain the examiner’s rejection
of independent claims 100 and 117 or of any of the claims which
depend therefrom.
Remaining independent claim 129 does not recite a state
vector. Appellants argue, however, that Ishikawa does not teach
a subset of rules from which the values of the input variables
will be selected. According to appellants, Ishikawa has only one
set of rules, not several sets of rules as required by claim 129.
We do not agree with this argument. The computer of Ishikawa
stores a plurality of rules such as Rule 001 to Rule 155 shown in
Figures 16A to 18. Ishikawa shows that these rules can be
separated into a plurality of different subsets based on the
location of the obstacles, such as Rules 003-011 for when
obstacles exist to the right, left and ahead of the mobile
machine. In response to the measured input values, Ishikawa
allows certain of the Rules to fire. The Rules that fire
constitute a selected set of the rules as recited in claim 129.
12
Page: Previous 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007