You need to hire someone to do a patent opinion for you. Don't pay a ton of money (so don't hire MoFo or something crazy like that), but don't cheap out either. Interpreting claims isn't something you can do on your own, especially when some patents have extremely broad sounding means-plus-function claims that are in actuality much narrower.

Patents don't have to further the state of the art, but they must teach a person skilled in the art how to practice the claimed invention.