Patent Issued for Adjustable virtual scenario-based training environment (USPTO 11551431): State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company

2023 FEB 01 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- A patent by the inventors Little, Rebecca A. (Mesa, AZ, US), Nussbaum, Bryan R. (Bloomington, IL, US), Stockweather, Deanna L. (Normal, IL, US), Summers, Nathan C. (Mesa, AZ, US), Wylie, Karen (Buckeye, AZ, US), filed on August 5, 2021, was published online on January 10, 2023, according to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx correspondents.

Patent number 11551431 is assigned to State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company (Bloomington, Illinois, United States).

The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Conventionally, real property owned, leased, or otherwise used by a business or individual may be eligible to be insured based upon risk factors associated with the property. When evaluating a real property (e.g., a commercial building such as a bakery, coffee shop, or medical office), a property specialist or other subject matter expert may be physically dispatched to the real property to assess the real property, including the structure and contents thereof, to identify the risk factors (or lack thereof) associated with the real property.

“Expertise in property assessment requires a significant degree of experience. That is, a prospective property assessment specialist (“trainee”) must be trained to identify relevant aspects of a real property or structure that may affect risk associated with the real property. Conventionally, an expert trainer and the trainee may physically travel to a real property or other physical site to provide property assessment training to the trainee. Travel is typically necessary in these situations because telephony and fixed-point digital image analysis (e.g., video conferences) do not allow individuals to move about the real property to dynamically and closely examine the features thereof. These time-consuming and costly travel practices, while often necessary to actually generate an insurance policy for the real property, would ideally be avoidable in the process of training a prospective property specialist. Furthermore, any one particular real property to which a trainee might expose the trainee to only the set of conditions or features present at the one real property, in which the trainee may only encounter a very small subset of aspects that are relevant in determining risk for other properties.

“Existing VR systems do not entirely overcome the difficulties of property assessment training as described above. For example, virtual environments are time-consuming to develop, and any one particular virtual environment might still only provide a small subset of aspects of a property that might be relevant in determining risk. Thus, the trainee may require exposure to a large number of virtual environments to achieve a full virtual training experience. Furthermore, conventional techniques would require that a virtual environment is created manually, and as such, creating any one virtual environment may require significant time and expertise, amounting to costs comparable to the aforementioned conventional training methods.”

In addition to the background information obtained for this patent, NewsRx journalists also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “The present application discloses methods, systems, and computer-readable media via which adjustable virtual training environments may be generated and provided. Particularly, a virtual environment may include a “virtual property” generated dynamically via procedural generation techniques to include a variety of features that may be found in real properties (e.g., structures, fixture, furniture, small loose items, etc.). By procedurally generating virtual properties, the virtual environment may be adjusted to include differing aspects of diverse virtual properties generated via these techniques. The disclosed embodiments improve existing VR systems by automatically providing various embodiments of a virtual environment, comprising dynamic, adjustable arrangements of objects that make the virtual environment suitable for use in property assessment training, thereby overcoming drawbacks of conventional virtual property assessment training techniques. Various aspects are summarized below and described in further detail herein.

“In an embodiment, a computer-implemented method may be provided for providing an adjustable virtual environment. The computer-implemented method may include (1) generating, via one or more processors, a virtual property comprising a plurality of features, wherein generating the virtual property comprises automatically generating at least a portion of a plurality of features in accordance with a predefined rule set, and wherein the generated virtual property is associated with one or more relevant aspects of the virtual property, each of the one or more relevant aspects affecting risk associated with the virtual property, and/or (2) providing, via the one or more processors, to a virtual environment interface device of a user, the virtual environment comprising the generated virtual property. The computer-implemented method may include additional, fewer, and/or alternate actions, including actions described herein.

“In another embodiment, a computing system may be configured to provide an adjustable virtual environment. The computing system may include (1) one or more processors, and (2) one or more non-transitory computer memories storing non-transitory computer-executable instructions that, when executed via the one or more processors, cause the computing system to (i) generate a virtual property comprising a plurality of features, wherein generating the virtual property comprises automatically generating at least a portion of a plurality of features in accordance with a predefined rule set, and wherein the generated virtual property is associated with one or more relevant aspects of the virtual property, each of the one or more relevant aspects affecting risk associated with the virtual property, and (ii) provide, to a virtual environment interface device of a user, the virtual environment comprising the generated virtual property. The computing system may include additional, fewer, and/or alternate computing components and/or actions, including those described herein.

“In yet another embodiment, one or more non-transitory computer-readable media may store non-transitory computer-executable instructions that, when executed via one or more processors, cause one or more computers to (1) generate a virtual property comprising a plurality of features, wherein generating the virtual property comprises automatically generating at least a portion of a plurality of features in accordance with a predefined rule set, and wherein the generated virtual property is associated with one or more relevant aspects of the virtual property, each of the one or more relevant aspects affecting risk associated with the virtual property; and (2) provide, to a virtual environment interface device of a user, the virtual environment comprising the generated virtual property. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media may store additional, fewer, and/or alternate non-transitory computer-executable instructions, including those described herein.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A computer-implemented method, comprising: generating, via one or more processors, a virtual property, wherein the virtual property is simultaneously navigable, via a plurality of electronic devices, during an insurance risk identification training exercise; generating, via the one or more processors, and based on a first computing capability of a first electronic device of the plurality of electronic devices, a first feature of the virtual property associated with a first user; generating, via the one or more processors, and based on a second computing capability of a second electronic device of the plurality of electronic devices, a second feature of the virtual property associated with a second user; providing, via the one or more processors and during the training exercise, a virtual environment to a virtual environment interface of the first electronic device, the virtual environment comprising the virtual property including the first feature and the second feature; providing, via the one or more processors and during the training exercise, the virtual environment to a virtual environment interface of the second electronic device; receiving, via the one or more processors, an input from the first electronic device, the input indicating a modification to the virtual property included in the virtual environment; and modifying, via the one or more processors, the virtual property based on the input such that the modification to the virtual property is simultaneously presented, in the virtual environment and during the training exercise, via the first electronic device and the second electronic device.

“2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the first electronic device comprises a virtual reality hardware system and the second electronic device comprises a smartphone.

“3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising, determining, via the one or more processors and in accordance with a predefined rule set, a plurality of features associated with the virtual property, each feature of the plurality of features being characterized by a corresponding risk associated with the virtual property.

“4. The computer-implemented method of claim 3, further comprising: selecting, via the one or more processors and based on the first input, a feature of the plurality of features; and providing, via the one or more processors, an indication of the feature, and of a particular risk corresponding to the feature, to the second electronic device such that the feature and the particular risk are simultaneously presented, in the virtual environment and during the training exercise, via the first electronic device and the second electronic device.

“5. The computer-implemented method of claim 3, further comprising: providing, via the one or more processors, an indication of the plurality of features such that the plurality of features are simultaneously presented, in the virtual environment and during the training exercise, via the first electronic device and the second electronic device; receiving, via the one or more processors and in response to presentation of the plurality of features, an input from the second electronic device, the input from the second electronic device indicating an association between a first feature of the plurality of features and a first risk; and determining, via the one or more processors and based on the input from the second device, a validity of the association between the first feature and the first risk.

“6. The computer-implemented method of claim 5, further comprising: generating, via the one or more processors, a visual overlay indicating the validity of the association; and providing, via the one or more processors, the overlay to the second electronic device such that the virtual overlay is presented, in the virtual environment and during the training exercise, via the second electronic device.

“7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising providing, via the one or more processors and within the virtual environment, one or more communication channels for real-time bidirectional communication between the first electronic device and the second electronic device.

“8. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising providing, via the one or more processors and within the virtual environment, a virtual office separate from the virtual property, wherein the virtual office is configured to enable: generation of a task list associated with the virtual property, or arrangement of virtual tools and materials for use in analyzing the virtual property.

“9. A system, comprising: one or more processors; and non-transitory computer memory storing instructions that, when executed via the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to: generate a virtual property, wherein the virtual property is simultaneously navigable via a plurality of electronic devices, during an insurance risk identification training exercise; generate, based on a first computing capability of a first electronic device, a first feature of the virtual property associated with a first user; generate, based on a second computing capability of a second electronic device, a second feature of the virtual property associated with a second user; provide, during the training exercise, a virtual environment to a virtual environment interface of the first electronic device, the virtual environment comprising the virtual property including the first feature and the second feature; provide, during the training exercise, the virtual environment to a virtual environment interface of the second electronic device; receive an input from the first electronic device, the input indicating a modification to the virtual property included in the virtual environment; and modify the virtual property based on the input such that the modification to the virtual property is simultaneously presented, in the virtual environment and during the training exercise, via the first electronic device and the second electronic device.

“10. The system of claim 9, wherein the instructions, when executed via the one or more processors, further cause the one or more processors to determine, in accordance with a predefined rule set, a plurality of features associated with the virtual property, each feature of the plurality of features being characterized by a corresponding risk associated with the virtual property.

“11. The system of claim 10, wherein the instructions, when executed via the one or more processors, further cause the one or more processors to: select, based on the first input, a feature of the plurality of features; and provide an indication of the feature, and of a particular risk corresponding to the feature, to the second electronic device such that the feature and the particular risk are simultaneously presented, in the virtual environment and during the training exercise, via the first electronic device and the second electronic device.

“12. The system of claim 10, wherein the instructions, when executed via the one or more processors, further cause the one or more processors to: provide an indication of the plurality of features such that the plurality of features are simultaneously presented, in the virtual environment and during the training exercise, via the first electronic device and the second electronic device; receive, in response to presentation of the plurality of features, an input from the second electronic device, the input from the second electronic device indicating an association between a first feature of the plurality of features and a first risk; and determine, based on the input from the second device, a validity of the association between the first feature and the first risk.

“13. The system of claim 12, wherein the instructions, when executed via the one or more processors, further cause the one or more processors to: generate a visual overlay indicating the validity of the association; and provide the overlay to the second electronic device such that the virtual overlay is presented, in the virtual environment and during the training exercise, via the second electronic device.

“14. The system of claim 9, wherein the virtual environment includes a virtual avatar controlled by the second user via the second electronic device, and the instructions, when executed via the one or more processors, further cause the one or more processors to enable the first user to at least temporarily control, via the first electronic device, movement of the virtual avatar within the virtual environment.

“15. The system of claim 9, wherein the instructions, when executed via the one or more processors, further cause the one or more processors to enable the first user to at least temporarily control, via the first electronic device, presentation of the virtual environment via the second electronic device.”

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

URL and more information on this patent, see: Little, Rebecca A. Adjustable virtual scenario-based training environment. U.S. Patent Number 11551431, filed August 5, 2021, and published online on January 10, 2023. Patent URL (for desktop use only): https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/external.html?q=(11551431)&db=USPAT&type=ids

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