Obviousness

Obviousness under 35 U.S.C. § 103 requires an analysis of whether the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSA) at the time of the invention, based on publicly available prior art. This involves considering the scope and content of the prior art, the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art, the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art, and any secondary considerations of non-obviousness. An invention can be rendered obvious by a single reference or a combination of prior art references, provided there is a motivation to combine them with a reasonable expectation of success.

The provided patent text for US10823576 includes a "Prior art keywords" section, which lists: "robot", "nodes", "route", "map", "environment". These keywords suggest the general field of the invention.

The patent describes systems and methods for robotic mapping, aiming to correct inaccuracies and generate maps representing the environment and/or the robot's route. Key aspects include:

• Creating a graph of nodes, where each node corresponds to a sensor scan at a location.
• Constraining the graph to start and end at a substantially similar location (e.g., in view of a home locator).
• Performing scan matching on "extended scan groups" (e.g., three or more scans), determined by identifying overlapping distinct features from scans at various nodes.
• Associating ranges of possible locations and confidences with each node based on scan matching.
• Optimizing the graph by minimizing a cost function derived from relative node locations and confidences to find likely node locations.
• Rendering a map from the optimized graph, potentially using ray tracing.
• The system aims for computational efficiency and allows for lower-cost hardware.

To determine obviousness, we would need to analyze specific prior art references that disclose these elements and identify motivations for combining them. However, the provided document does not list or describe specific prior art references in detail that were considered during the prosecution of US10823576, beyond the keywords. It only states "Prior art date: 2016-11-01" and mentions a related U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/340,807, filed Nov. 1, 2016, as a continuation.

Therefore, without the specific content of the prior art references, it is not possible to identify combinations of prior art that would render the claims of US10823576 obvious or explain the motivation for combining them. A proper obviousness analysis would require reviewing documents that predate the priority date of November 1, 2016, and examining their disclosures in detail against the claims of US10823576.