The inventive choice in a perception claim is often the primitive it commits to. Starship's grant US10732641B2 ("Mobile robot system and method for generating map data using straight lines extracted from visual images," issued August 4, 2020; inventors Ahti Heinla, Kalle-Rasmus Volkov, Lindsay Roberts, Indrek Mandre) builds its map from straight lines rather than point features. That is the claim: lines, not points, as the mapping primitive.
Why lines? Sidewalks, curbs, building edges, and pavement seams are dominated by long straight structures, and lines are more stable across viewpoint and lighting change than sparse point features. A line-based map is compact and robust in exactly the urban-pedestrian environment a delivery robot lives in. The G06T 7/579 (structure-from-motion) and G06T 7/73 (pose from features) codes mark the SLAM machinery; the G01C 21/32 code marks the map construction itself.
For the control beat, the appearance of G06Q 10/0833 — a logistics/shipping code — in a SLAM patent is a small but telling detail. It situates the mapping claim inside a delivery-operations context, which is Starship's actual business. The mapping technique isn't abstract; it's fenced as part of a system that delivers parcels, and that operational anchoring is the kind of context the patent desk values.
From a portfolio angle, choosing a distinctive primitive — lines — is a smart way to carve defensible space in the crowded visual-SLAM field. A point-feature SLAM claim drowns in prior art; a line-feature claim tied to a specific extraction-and-mapping pipeline can find clear room. The inventor list, including Starship's founders, signals this was a core-technology filing, not a peripheral one.
Caveats. Line-based SLAM has its own academic lineage, so the grant turns on the specific extraction-and-association method in claim 1, not on the idea of using lines. And the delivery-context codes don't narrow the perception claim by themselves; they describe the embodiment. Read claim 1 for how lines are detected and matched across frames.
For the file: a distinctive, well-anchored line-feature SLAM grant tied to delivery robotics. Pull US10732641B2 on PatentBear and read claim 1 for the line-extraction-and-association step — the primitive choice is the moat.