“Enhanced Unmanned Aerial Vehicles For Damage Inspection” in Patent Application Approval Process (USPTO 20240112275): Allstate Insurance Company

2024 APR 22 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Defense & Aerospace Daily -- A patent application by the inventors Corder, Bryan Keith (Gurnee, IL, US); Marlow, Clint J. (Barrington Hills, IL, US), filed on December 7, 2023, was made available online on April 4, 2024, according to news reporting originating from Washington, D.C., by NewsRx correspondents.

This patent application is assigned to Allstate Insurance Company (Northbrook, Illinois, United States).

The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Insured parties pay premiums for coverage of potential liabilities including damage to the insured property. In the event of damage to the insured property, an insurance claims agent and/or claims adjuster is dispatched to verify and assess the scope and nature of the damage to the insured property. However, there are times when the damaged portion of the property is inaccessible to the human insurance agent/adjuster. Sometimes the insurance policyholder may not be able to report proof of the damage and an insurance agent may not be a cost effective option for damage inspection. In other situations, the insurance agent/adjuster may not be able to accurately determine the degree of damage to the insured property. In several situations, the human insurance agent/adjuster may not have the necessary tools or the necessary skills to determine and report all types of property damage.

“A human insurance agent may also not be familiar with the insurance history of the property that he is investigating or have the necessary background information needed to properly assess the damage to a property and determine any present risks of future damage based on the condition of the insured property. Accordingly, the claim estimation performed by an insurance provider from such incomplete information may not accurately capture all the potential risks of damage to the property as well as capture all of the damage to this property.

“Furthermore, an insurance agent often cannot be immediately dispatched to perform scene investigation at the scene of an incident. There is often useful information that can be collected only at the scene of the incident that is often not captured in insurance claims calculation.

“Furthermore, numerous conventional systems do not facilitate insurance decisions to be made in real time while the damage information is acquired from the insured property. Therefore, there is room for improvement in existing systems and processes including in areas such as the insurance claims investigation process to capture all damage information for an insured property that an insurance agent is otherwise not able to capture, assess potential risk of future damage, collect damage information at the scene of an incident, and/or process insurance claims during in real time as the claims investigation.”

In addition to the background information obtained for this patent application, NewsRx journalists also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent application: “The following presents a simplified summary in order to provide a basic understanding of some aspects of the disclosure. The summary is not an extensive overview of the disclosure. It is neither intended to identify key or critical elements of the disclosure nor to delineate the scope of the disclosure. The following summary merely presents some concepts of the disclosure in a simplified form as a prelude to the description below.

“Aspects of the disclosure relate to systems and methods for collecting damage information from insured vehicles of insurance policyholders. A computing device may receive a request to inspect a vehicle which includes a location of the vehicle. The computing device may identify an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) from a plurality of UAVs that is located closest to the location of the vehicle from other UAVs in the plurality of UAVs. The computing device may instruct the UAV to travel to the location of the vehicle and to collect damage information on the vehicle using one or more onboard sensors of the UAV. The computing device may determine an amount of insurance payout to approve for repairs to the vehicle based on the damage information collected by the UAV. In order to determine the amount of insurance payout to approve further comprises, the computing device may determine the insurance account with which the vehicle is associated, identifying an insurance policy coverage of the insurance account with respect to the vehicle, and determine which repairs are covered by the insurance policy coverage by examining the damage information collected by the UAV. The computing device may determine an amount of insurance payout to approve for repairs to the vehicle based on the information collected by the UAV.

“In some aspects, the computing device may receive damage information for the vehicle from the UAV. The computing device may identify one or more repairs that the vehicle needs from the damage information. The computing device may instruct the UAV to perform duties of an insurance claims adjuster.

“In some aspects, the request to inspect the vehicle is received in response to a determination that the vehicle has been involved in a vehicle collision, and the location of the vehicle corresponds to a location of the vehicle collision. The computing device may determine that the vehicle collision is in a vicinity of a traffic intersection from the location. In response to determining that the vehicle location is in the vicinity of the traffic intersection, the computing device may instruct the UAV to monitor a traffic light at the traffic intersection to collect traffic light timing information. The computing device may receive the traffic light timing information from the UAV. The computing device may determine that at least one vehicle involved in the vehicle collision committed a traffic violation from the traffic light timing information. The computing device may instruct the UAV to collect a plurality of different types of information at the location of the vehicle collision using the one or more onboard sensors of the UAV, wherein the plurality of different types of information collected by the UAV comprises optical image data, infrared image data, hyperspectral image data, LIDAR data, thermal sensor data, chemical sensor data, event data recorder data, and audio data. The computing device may receive additional information from the UAV indicating that one or more safety features of the vehicle were activated in the vehicle collision. The computing device may adjust the insurance policy decision based on the additional information.

“In some aspects, the computing device may receive a claims request for the vehicle and determine that instructing the UAV to collect the information about the condition of the vehicle is a cost effective option to respond to the claims request. The computing device may determine an insurance account with which the vehicle is associated and may identify an insurance policy coverage of the insurance account with respect to the vehicle. The computing device may determine at least one aspect of the vehicle for which to capture detailed information based on the insurance policy coverage for the vehicle and the claims request. The computing device may instruct the UAV to use one or more of the onboard sensors to collect the detailed information for the at least one determined feature of the vehicle.

“In some aspects, the determination to inspect the vehicle may be made upon receiving an indication from a policyholder associated with the vehicle that the vehicle has been submitted to a repair shop. In response to determining a location of the repair shop from the indication received from the policyholder, instruct the UAV to travel to the location of the repair shop to assess damage of the vehicle before the vehicle is repaired. The computing device may receive a report from the repair shop identifying the damages that the repair shop claims to have fixed in the vehicle. The computing device may determine that the report from the repair shop is claiming to have fixed one or more damage to the vehicle that is not identified in the information captured by the UAV about the condition of the vehicle before the vehicle was repaired.

“Another aspect of the disclosure relate to systems and methods for receiving first information about a condition of a vehicle of an insurance policyholder at a first time. The computing device may determine an insurance risk associated with the vehicle based on the first information. The computing device may instruct the UAV to collect second information about the condition of the vehicle at a second time, wherein the UAV is instructed to collect information associated with the determined insurance risk. The computing device may generate an insurance policy decision for the insurance policyholder based on the first information and the second information collected by the UAV. The first information about the condition of the vehicle is received at a first time at which the vehicle was inspected by an approved claims agent. The second time may occur after the first time and the UAV may be instructed to use one or more onboard sensors of the UAV to collect detailed information on at least one aspect of the vehicle identified by the insurance risk. Determining the insurance risk may comprise examining the received first information to identify any aspects of the vehicle that are not in compliance with an insurance coverage policy associated with the insurance policyholder. The computing device may identify at least one aspect of the vehicle that needs to be fixed in order to be compliant with the insurance coverage policy. Instructing the UAV to collect the second information about the condition of the vehicle may comprise determining a location of the vehicle and instructing the UAV to travel to the location of the vehicle. Generating the insurance policy decision may comprise identifying an insurance policy coverage for the vehicle associated with the insurance policyholder and determining one or more actions indicated by the insurance policy coverage that are associated with the insurance risk and the second information collected by the UAV.

“Another aspect of the disclosure relates to systems and methods for collecting damage information from insured real estate properties of insurance policyholders. The computing device may instruct a UAV to travel to a real estate property corresponding to a damage incident and to collect information on at least one aspect of the real estate property using one or more onboard sensors of the UAV. In response receiving the information from the one or more sensors of the UAV, the computing device may identify a type of damage incurred on the at least one aspect of the real estate property based on the information and instruct the UAV to deliver a payment to an insurance policyholder associated with the real estate property for the identified type of damage. Instructing the UAV to collect information on the at least one aspect may comprise instructing the UAV to identify damage to the at least one aspect of the real estate property and to use or more onboard sensors to collect different types of data based on the damage. The computing device may instruct the UAV to identify a plurality of vantage points with respect to the at least one aspect of the real estate property and to collect information on the at least one aspect from each of the plurality of the identified vantage points. The computing device may receive the information on the at least one aspect of the real estate property collected by the one or more onboard sensors of the UAV. The computing device may identify a type of damage incurred on the at least one aspect of the real estate property based on the information collected by the UAV and may determine whether the insurance policyholder has insured the real estate property for the identified type of damage. In response to determining that the insurance policyholder has insured the real estate property for the identified type of damage, the computing device may identify insurance account history of the insurance policyholder and may identify an amount of payout that the insurance policyholder is eligible to receive for the identified type of damage based on at least one of the insurance account history and extent of the identified damage from the information collected by the UAV.”

There is additional summary information. Please visit full patent to read further.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A provider computing system communicatively coupled to an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), the provider computing system comprising: at least one processor; and memory storing instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to: cause the UAV to autonomously fly over an area containing insured property; cause the UAV to collect information about a condition of the insured property using one or more sensors of the UAV; identify, based on the collected information, a potential risk to the insured property; transmit, to a server of an insurance company, an alert regarding the potential risk; prepare, by the provider computing system, a claim relating to the potential risk; and deliver the prepared claim to a policyholder related to the insured property.

“2. The provider computing system of claim 1, wherein the provider computing system is communicatively coupled to a plurality of UAVs; and wherein causing the UAV to autonomously travel to the location of the insured property is responsive to determine that the UAV is geographically closer to the insured property relative to at least one other UAV of the plurality of UAVs.

“3. The provider computing system of claim 1, wherein the insured property comprises a vehicle or a real estate property.

“4. The provider computing system of claim 1, wherein causing the UAV to autonomously fly over the area containing the insured property comprises: generating a flight trajectory for the UAV from a current location to the location of the area containing the insured property; and transmitting the generated flight trajectory to the UAV.

“5. The provider computing system of claim 4, wherein causing the UAV to autonomously fly over the area containing the insured property further comprises causing the UAV to perform a routine inspection of at least one other insured property that is along the flight trajectory.

“6. The provider computing system of claim 1, wherein the potential risk comprises an aspect of the insured property that is not in compliance with an insurance coverage policy associated with the policyholder.

“7. The provider computing system of claim 1, wherein the potential risk comprises one or more of: an adjacent structure, a potential hazard related to the area containing the insured property, a location of an object, physical conditions, dangerous chemicals, and a temperature of a component of the insured property that is outside a normal temperate range of such components.

“8. The provider computing system of claim 1, wherein preparing the claim relating to the potential risk comprises identifying whether the policyholder had been previously notified of the potential risk.

“9. The provider computing system of claim 8, wherein, if the policyholder had been previously notified of the potential risk and the policyholder did nothing to mitigate the potential risk, the prepared claim comprises very little or no damage recuperation payment to the policyholder.

“10. A method comprising: causing, by a provider computing system communicatively coupled to an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), the UAV to autonomously fly over an area containing insured property; causing, by the provider computing system, the UAV to collect information about a condition of the insured property using one or more sensors of the UAV; identifying, by the provider computing system and based on the collected information, a potential risk to the insured property; transmitting, by the provider computing system and to a server of an insurance company, an alert regarding the potential risk; preparing, by the provider computing system, a claim relating to the potential risk; and delivering the prepared claim to a policyholder related to the insured property.

“11. The method of claim 10, wherein the insured property comprises a vehicle or a real estate property.

“12. The method of claim 10, wherein causing the UAV to autonomously fly over the area containing the insured property comprises: generating a flight trajectory for the UAV from a current location to the location of the area containing the insured property; and transmitting the generated flight trajectory to the UAV.

“13. The method of claim 12, wherein causing the UAV to autonomously fly over the area containing the insured property further comprises causing the UAV to perform a routine inspection of at least one other insured property that is along the flight trajectory.

“14. The method of claim 10, wherein the potential risk comprises an aspect of the insured property that is not in compliance with an insurance coverage policy associated with the policyholder.

“15. The method of claim 10, wherein the potential risk comprises one or more of: an adjacent structure, a potential hazard related to the area containing the insured property, a location of an object, physical conditions, dangerous chemicals, and a temperature of a component of the insured property that is outside a normal temperate range of such components.

“16. Non-transitory computer readable media having computer executable instructions embodied therein that, when executed by at least one processor of a computing system, cause the computing system to perform operations for an inspection, the operations comprising: communicatively coupling to an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), the UAV having one or more sensors; causing the UAV to autonomously fly over an area containing insured property; causing the UAV to collect information about a condition of the insured property using one or more sensors of the UAV; identifying, based on the collected information, a potential risk to the insured property; transmitting, to a server of an insurance company, an alert regarding the potential risk; preparing, by the computing system, a claim relating to the potential risk; and delivering the prepared claim to a policyholder related to the insured property.

“17. The operations of claim 16, wherein the insured property comprises a vehicle or a real estate property.

“18. The operations of claim 16, wherein causing the UAV to autonomously fly over the area containing the insured property comprises: generating a flight trajectory for the UAV from a current location to the location of the insured property; and transmitting the generated flight trajectory to the UAV.

“19. The operations of claim 18, wherein causing the UAV to autonomously fly over the area containing the insured property further comprises causing the UAV to perform a routine inspection of at least one other insured property that is along the flight trajectory.

“20. The operations of claim 16, wherein the potential risk comprises an aspect of the insured property that is not in compliance with an insurance coverage policy associated with the policyholder.”

URL and more information on this patent application, see: Corder, Bryan Keith; Marlow, Clint J. Enhanced Unmanned Aerial Vehicles For Damage Inspection. U.S. Patent Application Number 20240112275, filed December 7, 2023 and posted April 4, 2024. Patent URL (for desktop use only): https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/external.html?q=(20240112275)&db=US-PGPUB&type=ids

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