Patent Issued for Accident reconstruction implementing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) (USPTO 11002540)

2021 JUN 18 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- According to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx journalists, a patent by the inventors Baumann, Nathan W (Bloomington, IL, US), Grant, Rosemarie Geier (Ellsworth, IL, US), Harvey, Brian N (Bloomington, IL, US), Jacob, Michael Shawn (Le Roy, IL, US), Lillie, Joshua David (Bloomington, IL, US), Lyons, Roxane (Chenoa, IL, US), Ryan, Timothy W (Hudson, IL, US), Tofte, Nathan L (Downs, IL, US), filed on October 25, 2018, was published online on May 11, 2021.

The assignee for this patent, patent number 11002540, is State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company (Bloomington, Illinois, United States).

Reporters obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Conventionally, allocating the fault for a vehicle collision or crash may involve an arduous and time-consuming manual process that requires a large component of human intervention. Accident reconstruction may be utilized to help determine what happened during a vehicle collision or crash, but requires data that may require considerable effort to obtain, such as speaking with witnesses, visiting the scene of the vehicle collision or crash, and examining vehicle damage.

“The present embodiments may overcome these and/or other deficiencies.”

In addition to obtaining background information on this patent, NewsRx editors also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “Methods, systems, apparatus, and non-transitory computer-readable media are described that leverage the use of one or more unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or “drones”) to facilitate one or more insurance-related tasks. In various embodiments, one or more UAVs may actively survey an area or be dispatched to the scene of a vehicle collision or crash, which may occur manually or as part of an automated or semi-automated process. Once at the scene of the vehicle collision or crash, one or more UAVs may collect data related to the vehicle collision or crash, such as vehicle data, insurer data, images, video, weather conditions, audio and/or recorded statements given by witnesses and/or other persons associated with the vehicle collision or crash, etc.

“The one or more UAV’s may transmit this data to an external computing device as drone data, which may be associated with an insurer and/or utilized by the insurer to generate a virtual reconstruction model of the vehicle collision or crash. The external computing device may perform a photogrammetric analysis of images associated with the vehicle collision or crash to determine vehicle impact points, the road layout at the scene of the collision, the speeds and directions of vehicles, etc., which may be used to generate the virtual reconstruction model of the vehicle collision or crash. An insurer may use the virtual reconstruction model to perform various insurance-related tasks, such as the allocation of fault to drivers involved in the vehicle collision or crash, adjustment of insurance pricing based upon the fault allocation, using the fault allocation to modify a premium price, update qualified discounts, etc.

“Advantages will become more apparent to those skilled in the art from the following description of the preferred embodiments which have been shown and described by way of illustration. As will be realized, the present embodiments may be capable of other and different embodiments, and their details are capable of modification in various respects. Accordingly, the drawings and description are to be regarded as illustrative in nature and not as restrictive.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A computer-implemented method of vehicle collision or crash reconstruction using drone data, comprising: receiving, by one or more processors, drone data via wireless communications, the drone data being generated by one or more drones and including vehicle collision or crash images of (i) vehicles involved in a vehicular collision or crash, and (ii) a scene of the vehicle collision or crash, performing, by one or more processors, a photogrammetric analysis of the vehicle collision or crash images, the photogrammetric analysis including calculating respective speeds and respective directions of the vehicles before, during, and after the vehicle collision or crash; and generating, by one or more processors, a virtual accident reconstruction model of the vehicle collision or crash based upon the photogrammetric analysis of the vehicle collision or crash images, the virtual accident reconstruction model generated by overlaying respective movements of the vehicles, as indicated by the respective speeds and respective directions of the vehicles before, during, and after the vehicle collision or crash, onto respective locations of a model of a road on which the vehicle crash or collision occurred.

“2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising: assigning, by one or more processors, a percentage of fault to each driver and vehicle involved in the vehicle collision or crash based upon an analysis of the virtual accident reconstruction model of the vehicle collision or crash.

“3. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, further comprising: calculating, by one or more processors, pricing related to an insurance policy for a driver of an insured vehicle involved in the vehicle collision or crash based upon the percentage of fault assigned to the driver of the insured vehicle, or to the insured vehicle.

“4. The computer-implemented method of claim 3, further comprising: transmitting, by one or more processors, the pricing related to the insurance policy for the driver of the insured vehicle involved in the vehicle collision or crash to a mobile computing device associated with the insured driver.

“5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein calculating the respective speeds and the respective directions of the vehicles before, during, and after the vehicle collision or crash further comprises: identifying, by one or more processors, respective one or more impact points of each of the vehicles by analyzing the vehicle collision or crash images of the vehicles involved in the vehicular collision or crash; measuring, by one or more processors, a respective structural crush distance of each of the respective one or more impact points of each of the vehicles; and calculating, by one or more processors, a respective speed and a respective direction of each of the vehicles before, during, and after the vehicle collision or crash based upon a respective location and the respective structural crush distance of each of the respective one or more impact points of each of the vehicles.

“6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the model of the road comprises: a scaled road layout corresponding to the scene of the vehicle collision or crash, the scaled road layout generated by analyzing the images of the scene of the vehicle collision or crash.

“7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising: receiving, by one or more processors, telematics data from one or more of the vehicles involved in the vehicular collision or crash; and verifying, by one or more processors, the virtual accident reconstruction model with the telematics data.

“8. An external computing device associated with an insurance provider, comprising: a communication unit configured to receive drone data via wireless communications, wherein the drone data is generated by one or more drones and includes vehicle collision or crash images of (i) vehicles involved in a vehicular collision or crash, and (ii) a scene of the vehicle collision or crash; and a processor configured to: perform a photogrammetric analysis of the vehicle collision or crash images, the photogrammetric analysis including calculating respective speeds and respective directions of the vehicles before, during, and after the vehicle collision or crash; and generate a virtual accident reconstruction model of the vehicle collision or crash based upon the photogrammetric analysis of the vehicle collision or crash images, the virtual accident reconstruction model generated by overlaying respective movements of the vehicles, as indicated by the respective speeds and respective directions of the vehicles before, during, and after the vehicle collision or crash, onto respective locations of a model of a road on which the vehicle crash or collision occurred.

“9. The external computing device of claim 8, wherein the processor if further configured to: assign a percentage of fault to each driver involved in the vehicle collision or crash based upon an analysis of the virtual accident reconstruction model of the vehicle collision or crash.

“10. The external computing device of claim 9, wherein the processor is further configured to calculate pricing related to an insurance policy for a driver of an insured vehicle involved in the vehicle collision or crash based upon the percentage of fault assigned to the driver of the insured vehicle.

“11. The external computing device of claim 10, wherein the communication unit is further configured to transmit the pricing related to the insurance policy for the driver of the insured vehicle involved in the vehicle collision or crash to a mobile computing device associated with the insured driver.

“12. The external computing device of 8, wherein the calculation of the respective speeds and the respective directions of the vehicles before, during, and after the vehicle collision or crash includes (i) a respective identification of a respective one or more impact points of each of the vehicles by analyzing the images of the vehicles involved in the vehicular collision or crash, (ii) a respective measurement of a respective structural crush distance of each of the respective one or more impact points of each of the vehicles, and (iii) the respective speed and the respective direction of each of the vehicles before, during, and after the vehicle collision or crash based upon a respective location and the respective structural crush distance of each of the respective one or more impact points of each of the vehicles.

“13. The external computing device of claim 8, wherein the model of the road comprises: a scaled road layout corresponding to the scene of the vehicle collision or crash, the scaled road layout generated by analyzing the images of the scene of the vehicle collision or crash.

“14. The external computing device of claim 8, wherein the communication unit is further configured to receive telematics data from one or more of the vehicles involved in the vehicular collision or crash, and wherein the processor is further configured to verify the virtual accident reconstruction model with the telematics data.

“15. A non-transitory computer readable media having instructions stored thereon that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to: receive drone data via wireless communications, the drone data being generated by one or more drones and including vehicle collision or crash images of (i) vehicles involved in a vehicular collision or crash, and (ii) a scene of the vehicle collision or crash; perform a photogrammetric analysis of the vehicle collision or crash images to thereby calculate respective speeds and respective directions of the vehicles before, during, and after the vehicle collision or crash; and generate a virtual accident reconstruction model of the vehicle collision or crash based upon the photogrammetric analysis of the vehicle collision or crash images, the virtual accident reconstruction model generated by overlaying respective movements of the vehicles, as indicated by the respective speeds and respective directions of the vehicles before, during, and after the vehicle collision or crash, onto respective locations of a model of a road on which the vehicle crash or collision occurred.

“16. The non-transitory computer readable media of claim 15, further including instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to assign a percentage of fault to each driver involved in the vehicle collision or crash based upon an analysis of the virtual accident reconstruction model of the vehicle collision or crash.

“17. The non-transitory computer readable media of claim 16, further including instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to calculate pricing related to an insurance policy for a driver of an insured vehicle involved in the vehicle collision or crash based upon the percentage of fault assigned to the driver of the insured vehicle.

“18. The non-transitory computer readable media of claim 17, further including instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to transmit the pricing related to the insurance policy for the driver of the insured vehicle involved in the vehicle collision or crash to a mobile computing device associated with the insured driver.”

There are additional claims. Please visit full patent to read further.

For more information, see this patent: Baumann, Nathan W. Accident reconstruction implementing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). U.S. Patent Number 11002540, filed October 25, 2018, and published online on May 11, 2021. Patent URL: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=11002540.PN.&OS=PN/11002540RS=PN/11002540

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