Patent Issued for Automated vehicle ownership support (USPTO 11836737): United Services Automobile Association

2023 DEC 22 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- A patent by the inventors Oakes, III, Charles L. (Boerne, TX, US), Prasad, Bharat (San Antonio, TX, US), filed on July 10, 2020, was published online on December 5, 2023, according to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx correspondents.

Patent number 11836737 is assigned to United Services Automobile Association (San Antonio, Texas, United States).

The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Information and interactive mobile services available to mobile vehicles are increasing due to the demand of mobile vehicle operators for services such as navigation assistance, directory assistance, vehicle maintenance assistance, roadside assistance, information services assistance and emergency assistance. Requests for many of these services occur when a vehicle is outside of a home region, for example, during personal travel or business trips to neighboring or distant cities. Presently, on-board diagnostic (OBD) systems are incorporated into many types of vehicles, and provide an electronic solution for controlling, diagnosing, and reporting the operating state of the vehicle and to provide other wireless communication and location-based services.

“Currently, telematics service call centers, in-vehicle compact disk (CD) or digital video display (DVD) media, web portals, and voice-enabled phone portals provide various types of location services, including driving directions, stolen vehicle tracking, traffic information, weather reports, restaurant guides, ski reports, road condition information, accident updates, street routing, landmark guides, and business finders.

“However, conventional services do not provide a single interface for an enhanced vehicle ownership experience to the customer.”

In addition to the background information obtained for this patent, NewsRx journalists also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “As discussed herein, the subject disclosure provides an infrastructure and techniques that represent a marriage of vehicle telematics data, a smart fuel dispenser, cloud-based multichannel commerce solutions, and a customer device (e.g., a mobile device, tablet, computer, etc.). The infrastructure in cooperation with a mobile application running on a customer device provides a customizable vehicle ownership experience to customers, including novel value-added services and advice in addition to conventional capabilities.

“According to one particular embodiment of the subject disclosure, a computer system for processing vehicle ownership support data is disclosed. The computer system comprise a memory configured to store one or more processes. The processes, when executed by a processor, are operable to receive telematics data regarding a vehicle; analyze the telematics data to determine a low fuel condition based on the fuel of the vehicle violating a predetermined threshold; determine a location of the vehicle based on at least one of the telematics data; in response to determining the low fuel condition, identify one or more fuel dispensing stations in proximity to the location of the vehicle; provide information related to the one or more fuel dispensing stations to a mobile application displayed to a driver of the vehicle; determine a scope of fueling permissions associated with the vehicle at the one of the one or more fuel dispensing stations; and automatically initiate a fueling session at the one of the one or more fuel dispensing stations contingent upon the scope of fueling permission.

“In another embodiment, a method disclosed comprises receiving telematics data regarding a vehicle; analyzing the telematics data to determine a low fuel condition based on the fuel of the vehicle violating a predetermined threshold; determining a location of the vehicle based on at least one of the telematics data; in response to determining the low fuel condition, identifying one or more fuel dispensing stations in proximity to the location of the vehicle; providing information related to the one or more fuel dispensing stations to a mobile application displayed to a driver of the vehicle; determining a scope of fueling permissions associated with the vehicle at the one of the one or more fuel dispensing stations; and automatically initiating a fueling session at the one of the one or more fuel dispensing stations contingent upon the scope of fueling permission.

“In another embodiment disclosed, a system comprises means for receiving telematics data regarding a vehicle; means for analyzing the telematics data to determine a low fuel condition based on the fuel of the vehicle violating a predetermined threshold; means for determining a location of the vehicle based on at least one of the telematics data; means for identifying one or more fuel dispensing stations in proximity to the location of the vehicle in response to determining the low fuel condition; means for providing information related to the one or more fuel dispensing stations to a mobile application displayed to a driver of the vehicle; means for determining a scope of fueling permissions associated with the vehicle at the one of the one or more fuel dispensing stations; and means for automatically initiating a fueling session at the one of the one or more fuel dispensing stations contingent upon the scope of fueling permission.

“These and other features of the systems and methods of the subject invention will become more readily apparent to those skilled in the art from the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments taken in conjunction with the drawings.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A computer system for processing vehicle ownership support data, the computer system comprising: a memory of an infrastructure platform configured to store one or more processes that when executed by a processor are operable to: receive telematics data regarding a vehicle via a telematics service interface creating an interface between a telematics service interface client associated with a vehicle and an application programming interface facilitating communication with the infrastructure platform, wherein the telematics data includes GPS location data of the vehicle and a driving direction of the vehicle; analyze the telematics data to determine a low fuel condition based on the fuel of the vehicle violating a predetermined threshold; in response to the low fuel condition, determine a current location of the vehicle in real-time based on the GPS location data of the telematics data; in response to determining the low fuel condition, automatically identify, based on the driving direction, one or more fuel dispensing stations in proximity to the current location of the vehicle; continuously monitor the current location of the vehicle with respect to the one or more identified fuel dispensing stations; provide information related to each of the one or more identified fuel dispensing stations to a mobile application displayed to a driver of the vehicle; determine that the vehicle is located within a predetermined proximity to one of the one or more identified fuel dispensing stations; determine, based on a remaining amount of fuel in the vehicle, a scope of fueling permissions associated with the vehicle at the one of the one or more identified fuel dispensing stations using the infrastructure platform; and automatically initiate a fueling session at the one of the one or more identified fuel dispensing stations contingent upon the scope of fueling permission.

“2. The computer system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a web service implementing at least one of the one or more processes, wherein the web service comprises at least one representational state transfer conforming (RESTful) interface.

“3. The computer system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a push notification interface for providing a notification to the mobile application.

“4. The computer system as recited in claim 3, wherein the processes further include one or more processes to send one or more notifications to the mobile application using the push notification interface based upon the telematics data.

“5. The computer system as recited in claim 1, further comprising: one or more Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) configured to provide access of the telematics data to the mobile application.

“6. The computer system as recited in claim 1, wherein the telematics data further comprises trip history data associated with the vehicle.

“7. The computer system recited in claim 6, wherein the processes further include one or more processes to filter the trip history data based on a user-specified criteria and further operable to cause display of the filtered trip history data.

“8. The computer system as recited in claim 1, wherein the telematics data comprises vehicle diagnostics data, and wherein the processes further include one or more processes to send one or more maintenance notifications associated with the vehicle to the mobile application based upon the vehicle diagnostics data.

“9. The computer system as recited in claim 8, wherein the processes further include one or more processes to: identify one or more repair needs based on the vehicle diagnostics data; estimate repair cost associated with the one or more repair needs based on a data provided by a plurality of vehicle repair service providers; and cause display of the one or more repair needs and the estimated repair cost associated therewith on the mobile application.

“10. The computer system as recited in claim 1, wherein the predetermined threshold relates to the remaining amount of fuel.

“11. The computer system as recited in claim 1, wherein the predetermined threshold relates to a distance to empty.

“12. The computer system as recited in claim 11, wherein the distance to empty is based on fuel consumption information, the fuel consumption information is at least a portion of the telematics data.

“13. The computer system as recited in claim 1, wherein the processes include processes to: compare the current location to two or more fuel dispensing station locations; and determine a closest fuel dispensing station location, wherein the closest fuel dispensing station location is the location of the one of the one or more fuel dispensing stations.

“14. The computer system as recited in claim 13, wherein the processes include a process to: send map information corresponding to the one or more fuel dispensing stations to the mobile application based on comparing the current location to the two or more fuel dispensing station locations.

“15. A method for processing vehicle ownership support data by a processor, the method comprising: receiving telematics data regarding a vehicle via a telematics service interface creating an interface between a telematics service interface client associated with a vehicle and an application programming interface facilitating communication with an infrastructure platform, wherein the telematics data includes GPS location data of the vehicle and a driving direction of the vehicle; analyzing the telematics data to determine a low fuel condition based on the fuel of the vehicle violating a predetermined threshold; determining a location of the vehicle in real-time based on the GPS location data of the telematics data; in response to determining the low fuel condition, automatically identifying, based on the driving direction, one or more fuel dispensing stations in proximity to the location of the vehicle; continuously monitor the location of the vehicle with respect to the one or more identified fuel dispensing stations; providing information related to each of the one or more identified fuel dispensing stations to a mobile application displayed to a driver of the vehicle; determine that the vehicle is located within a predetermined proximity to one of the one or more identified fuel dispensing stations; determining, based on a remaining amount of fuel in the vehicle, a scope of fueling permissions associated with the vehicle at the one of the one or more identified fuel dispensing stations using the infrastructure platform; and automatically initiating a fueling session at the one of the one or more identified fuel dispensing stations contingent upon the scope of fueling permission.

“16. The method of claim 15, wherein the telematics data is received via a web service including a representational state transfer conforming (RESTful) interface.

“17. The method of claim 15, further comprising providing a notification to the mobile application.

“18. The method of claim 17, wherein the notification is based on the telematics data.

“19. The method of claim 15, wherein the telematics data further comprises trip history data associated with the vehicle.

“20. The method of claim 19, further comprising filtering the trip history data based on a user-specified criteria and further operable to cause display of the filtered trip history data.

“21. The method of claim 15, further comprising sending a maintenance notification associated with the vehicle to the mobile application based upon vehicle diagnostics data, wherein the telematics data comprises the vehicle diagnostics data.”

URL and more information on this patent, see: Oakes, III, Charles L. Automated vehicle ownership support. U.S. Patent Number 11836737, filed July 10, 2020, and published online on December 5, 2023. Patent URL (for desktop use only): https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/external.html?q=(11836737)&db=USPAT&type=ids

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