Patent Issued for Determining Body Characteristics Based On Images (USPTO 10,438,292)

2019 OCT 23 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- A patent by the inventor Rugel, John (Hawthorn Woods, IL), filed on September 17, 2015, was published online on October 21, 2019, according to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx correspondents.

Patent number 10,438,292 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: “Life insurance is not only an important financial tool and investment strategy for many customers, but also provides customers with the security and peace of mind of knowing that they are protecting the financial futures of their families and loved-ones. Many different types of life insurance policies may exist between insurance providers (or insurers) and customers (or insureds), such as term life insurance (providing life insurance protection over a specific period of time), whole life insurance (providing permanent insurance for the lifetime of the insured, generally with fixed terms), or universal life insurance (similar to whole life insurance, with additional flexibility to allow customers to raise or lower premiums and coverage amounts during the lifetime of their policies). Different insurance providers may offer various different types of life insurance products, including different insurance types, terms, premiums, and coverage amounts, to meet the needs and investment goals of different customers.

“Insurance providers may determine eligibility of different customers for different life insurance policies and terms (e.g., types, premiums, coverage amounts, term durations, investment flexibility, tax status, etc.), and may offer different policies and terms to different customers, based on various customer information, such as age, gender, income, health, and risk factors. In order to select appropriate life insurance policies and terms for customers, and to determine what policies and terms that different customers may be eligible for, insurance providers may ask customers to provide information related to their current height and weight. This information may be used to determine one or more risk factors associated with the user.

“Conventional systems may require verification of the height and weight provided by the user. This verification may include requiring the user to visit an insurance agent, physician’s office, or other third party vendor, who may collect this information to verify the information provided by the user. This may be costly and inefficient.”

In addition to the background information obtained for this patent, NewsRx journalists also obtained the inventor’s summary information for this patent: “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, apparatuses, computer-implemented methods, and computer-readable media executable by insurance system servers and user computing devices for receiving requests for insurance products. In some examples, the insurance product may include a life insurance policy. In order to determine one or more factors of the insurance product or policy, the system may use body characteristics of the customer or potential customer, such as height, weight, body mass index, and the like. In some examples, this information may be determined from one or more images provided by the user. For instance, the system may generate instructions that are transmitted to the user providing information regarding types of images to capture, number of images, and the like. The user may capture the images and transmit them to the system for processing. Based on the received images, the system may determine various body characteristics of the user and may use that information to determine one or more policy factors for the insurance product or policy, such as premium, coverage, term, type of policy, or the like.

“Other features and advantages of the disclosure will be apparent from the additional description provided herein.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“The invention claimed is:

“1. A system comprising: an insurance system server having at least a first processor and a first communication interface communicatively coupled to the at least a first processor and at least a first memory storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the at least a first processor, cause the insurance system server to: receive a request for an insurance product; identify at least one image of a customer or potential customer to be captured for use in determining an insurance policy factor; transmit, to a user computing device, instructions to capture the identified at least one image to a user computing device of the customer or potential customer; the user computing device having at least a second processor and a second communication interface communicatively coupled to the at least a second processor and at least a second memory storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the at least a second processor, cause the user computing device: execute an application on the user computing device, executing the application including: receiving the transmitted instructions to capture the identified at least one image; executing the received instructions including controlling an angle of an image capture device of the user computing device and capturing the at least one image based on the received instructions; converting the captured at least one image to a silhouette of the customer or potential customer; transmitting the converted, captured at least one image to the insurance system server; the insurance system server further including instructions that, when executed, further cause the insurance system server to: receive the transmitted at least one image; process the received at least one image to determine a height and a weight of the customer or potential customer from the at least one image; and determine an insurance policy factor based, at least in part, on the determined height and weight, for the insurance product.

“2. The system of claim 1, wherein the insurance policy factor includes a premium of the insurance product.

“3. The system of claim 1, the insurance system server further including instructions that, when executed, cause the insurance system server to: determine, based on the height and weight determined from the at least one image, a body mass index of the customer or potential customer; and determine the insurance policy factor based, at least in part, on the determined body mass index.

“4. The system of claim 1, wherein the insurance product is a life insurance policy.

“5. The system of claim 1, wherein the instructions to capture the at least one identified image include instructions to capture a plurality of images of the customer or potential customer and instructions regarding at least one of: body part to capture in at least one image, angle of capture of at least one image, and environment in which at least one image is captured.

“6. The system of claim 5, wherein the instructions regarding a body part to capture include at least one of a full body image, a side image, and a head or face image.

“7. The system of claim 1, the insurance system server further including instructions that, when executed, cause the insurance system server to: encode the received at least one image to generate encoded information derived from the at least one image.

“8. The system of claim 7, the insurance system server further including instructions that, when executed, cause the insurance system server to: store the encoded information derived from the at least one image and not store the at least one image.

“9. A method, comprising: at an insurance system server including at least one processor, memory and a communication interface: receiving, by the at least one processor via the communication interface, a request for an insurance product; determining, by the at least one processor, at least one image of a customer or potential customer requesting the insurance product to be used in determining an insurance policy factor; transmit instructions to capture the at least one image of the customer or potential customer, the transmitted instructions including transmitting an application to a user device including an image capture device and the application configured to control an angle of the image capture device when capturing the at least one image; receive the at least one image of the customer or potential customer; convert the received at least one image to a silhouette of the customer or potential customer; analyze the converted at least one image to determine, by the at least one processor, a height and a weight of the customer or potential customer based on the at least one image; determine, based, at least in part, on the determined height and weight, an insurance policy factor for the requested insurance product.

“10. The method of claim 9, wherein the request for the insurance product is received from a user computing device of the customer or potential customer and wherein the user computing device of the customer or potential customer is used to capture the at least one image.

“11. The method of claim 9, wherein the insurance policy factor includes a premium of the insurance product.

“12. The method of claim 9, further including: determining, based on the height and weight determined from the at least one image, a body mass index of the customer or potential customer; and determining the insurance policy factor based, at least in part, on the determined body mass index.

“13. The method of claim 9, wherein the insurance product is a life insurance policy.

“14. The method of claim 9, wherein the instructions to capture the at least one identified image include instructions to capture a plurality of images of the customer or potential customer and instructions regarding at least one of: body part to capture in at least one image, angle of capture of at least one image, and environment in which at least one image is captured.

“15. The method of claim 14, wherein the instructions regarding a body part to capture include at least one of a full body image, a side image, and a head or face image.

“16. The method of claim 9, further including: encoding the received at least one image.

“17. One or more non-transitory computer-readable media storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by an insurance system server comprising at least one processor, memory, and a communication interface, cause the insurance system server to: receive a request for an insurance product; determine at least one image of a customer or potential customer requesting the insurance product to be used in determining an insurance policy factor; transmit, to a user computing device of the customer or potential customer, a request to capture the at least one image of the customer or potential customer, transmitting the request including transmitting an application for execution on the user computing device, the application configured to control an angle of an image capture device of the user computing device when capturing the at least one image of the customer or potential customer; receive, from the user computing device, the at least one image of the customer or potential customer; convert the received at least one image of the customer or potential customer to a silhouette of the customer or potential customer; receive, from a third party database, identity verification information of the customer or potential customer, the identity verification information including at least one image of the customer or potential customer; determine, based on the converted at least one image and the received verification information, whether an identity of the customer or potential customer is verified; responsive to determining that the identity of the customer or potential customer is not verified, transmitting a notification to the customer or potential customer providing further instructions to obtain the requested insurance product; responsive to determining that the identity of the customer or potential customer is verified, processing the at least one image to determine a height and a weight of the customer or potential customer from the at least one image; and determine, based on the height and the weight of the customer or potential customer, an insurance policy factor of the requested insurance product.

“18. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 17, further including instructions that, when executed, cause the insurance system server to: determine, based on the height and weight determined from the at least one image, a body mass index of the customer or potential customer; and determine the insurance policy factor based, at least in part, on the determined body mass index.

“19. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 17, wherein the insurance policy factor includes a premium of the insurance product.

“20. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 17, wherein the insurance product is a life insurance policy.”

URL and more information on this patent, see: Rugel, John. Determining Body Characteristics Based On Images. U.S. Patent Number 10,438,292, filed September 17, 2015, and published online on October 21, 2019. 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=10,438,292.PN.&OS=PN/10,438,292RS=PN/10,438,292

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)