Patent Issued for Enhanced unmanned aerial vehicles for damage inspection (USPTO 11869090): Allstate Insurance Company

2024 JAN 26 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Defense & Aerospace Daily -- Allstate Insurance Company (Northbrook, Illinois, United States) has been issued patent number 11869090, according to news reporting originating out of Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx editors.

The patent’s inventors are Corder, Bryan Keith (Gurnee, IL, US), Marlow, Clint J. (Barrington Hills, IL, US).

This patent was filed on May 17, 2021 and was published online on January 9, 2024.

From the background information supplied by the inventors, news correspondents obtained the following quote: “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 asses 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.”

Supplementing the background information on this patent, NewsRx reporters also obtained the inventors’ 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 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.”

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: determine that a damaged property needs to be inspected; cause the UAV to autonomously travel to a location of the damaged property; cause the UAV to collect information about a condition of the damaged property using one or more sensors of the UAV; receive, from the UAV, inspection data collected by the one or more sensors; determine, based on the damage inspection data, a series of tests to perform; cause the UAV to perform the series of tests; receive, from the UAV and responsive to performing the series of tests, detailed inspection data; analyze the detailed inspection data to determine if any insurance limits apply; if any insurance limits apply, analyze the detailed inspection data to determine if it satisfies a special case exception to the insurance limits; and determine, based on the detailed inspection data, a monetary amount to approve for an insurance claim related to the damaged 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 damaged property is responsive to determine that the UAV is geographically closer to the damaged property relative to at least one other UAV.

“3. The provider computing system of claim 1, wherein the damaged property is a vehicle.

“4. The provider computing system of claim 1, wherein the damaged property is a first real estate property of a plurality of real estate properties.

“5. The provider computing system of claim 4, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, further cause the at least one processor to cause the UAV to perform a routine inspection of at least one real estate property of the plurality of real estate properties, the routine inspection comprising: causing the UAV to collect condition information associated with the plurality of real estate properties; receiving, from the UAV, the condition information; responsive to collecting the condition information, determining whether each real estate property of the plurality of real estate properties has been damaged, wherein determining that the damaged property needs to be inspected is responsive to determining whether each real estate property of the plurality of real estate properties has been damaged; identifying potential insurance risks associated with each of the plurality of real estate properties; and responsive to identifying the potential insurance risks, providing a notification of a respective potential insurance risk to a respective owner for each of the plurality of real estate properties.

“6. The provider computing system of claim 5, wherein causing the UAV to autonomously travel to the location of the damaged property comprises: generating a flight trajectory for the UAV from a current location to the location of the damaged property; and transmitting the generated flight trajectory to the UAV.

“7. The provider computing system of claim 6, wherein causing the UAV to autonomously travel to the location of the damaged property further comprises causing the UAV to perform the routine inspections of at least at least one real estate property that is along the flight trajectory.

“8. A method comprising: determining, by a provider computing system, that a damaged property needs to be inspected; causing, by the provider computing system, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to autonomously travel to a location of the damaged property, wherein the UAV is communicatively coupled to the provider computing system; causing, by the provider computing system, the UAV to collect information about a condition of the damaged property using one or more sensors of the UAV; receiving, by the provider computing system and from the UAV, inspection data collected by the one or more sensors; determining, by the provider computing system and based on the damage inspection data, a series of tests to perform; causing, by the provider computing system, the UAV to perform the series of tests; receiving, by the provider computing system, from the UAV, and responsive to performing the series of tests, detailed inspection data; analyzing the detailed inspection data to determine if any insurance limits apply; if any insurance limits apply, analyzing the detailed inspection data to determine if it satisfies a special case exception to the insurance limits; and determining, by the provider computing system and based on the detailed inspection data, a monetary amount to approve for an insurance claim related to the damaged property.

“9. The method of claim 8, wherein the damaged property is a vehicle.

“10. The method of claim 8, wherein the damaged property is at least one real estate property of a plurality of real estate properties.

“11. The method of claim 10, further comprising causing, by the provider computing system, the UAV to perform a routine inspection of the at least one real estate property of the plurality of real estate properties.

“12. The method of claim 11, wherein the routine inspection comprises: causing, by the provider computing system, the UAV to collect condition information associated with the plurality of real estate properties; receiving, by the provider computing system and from the UAV, the condition information; responsive to collecting the condition information, determining, by the provider computing system, whether each real estate property of the plurality of real estate properties has been damaged, wherein determining that the damaged property needs to be inspected is responsive to determining whether each real estate property of the plurality of real estate properties has been damaged; identifying, by the provider computing system, potential insurance risks associated with each of the plurality of real estate properties; and responsive to identifying the potential insurance risks, providing, by the provider computing system, a notification of a respective potential insurance risk to a respective owner for each of the plurality of real estate properties.

“13. The method of claim 12, wherein causing the UAV to autonomously travel to the location of the damaged property comprises: generating, by the provider computing system, a flight trajectory for the UAV from a current location to the location of the damaged property; and transmitting, by the provider computing system, the generated flight trajectory to the UAV.

“14. The method claim 13, wherein causing the UAV to autonomously travel to the location of the damaged property further comprises causing the UAV to perform the routine inspections of at least at least one real estate property that is along the flight trajectory.

“15. 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 enhanced damaged inspection, the operations comprising: communicatively coupling to an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), the UAV having one or more sensors; determining that a damaged property needs to be inspected; causing the UAV to autonomously travel to a location of the damaged property; causing the UAV to collect information about a condition of the damaged property using the one or more sensors of the UAV; receiving, from the UAV, inspection data collected by the one or more sensors; determining, based on the damage inspection data, a series of tests to perform; causing the UAV to perform the series of tests; receiving, from the UAV, and responsive to performing the series of tests, detailed inspection data; analyzing the detailed inspection data to determine if any insurance limits apply; if any insurance limits apply, analyzing the detailed inspection data to determine if it satisfies a special case exception to the insurance limits; and determining, based on the detailed inspection data, a monetary amount to approve for an insurance claim related to the damaged property.

“16. The operations of claim 15, wherein the damaged property is at least one of a vehicle and at least one real estate property of a plurality of real estate properties.

“17. The operations of claim 16, further comprising causing the UAV to perform a routine inspection operation on the at least one real estate property of the plurality of real estate properties.

“18. The operations of claim 17, wherein the routine inspection operation comprises: causing the UAV to collect condition information associated with the plurality of real estate properties; receiving, from the UAV, the condition information; responsive to collecting the condition information, determining whether each real estate property of the plurality of real estate properties has been damaged, wherein determining that the damaged property needs to be inspected is responsive to determining whether each real estate property of the plurality of real estate properties has been damaged; identifying potential insurance risks associated with each of the plurality of real estate properties; and responsive to identifying the potential insurance risks, providing a notification of a respective potential insurance risk to a respective owner for each of the plurality of real estate properties.

“19. The operations of claim 18, wherein causing the UAV to autonomously travel to the location of the damaged property comprises: generating a flight trajectory for the UAV from a current location to the location of the damaged property; and transmitting the generated flight trajectory to the UAV.”

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

For the URL and additional information on this patent, see: Corder, Bryan Keith. Enhanced unmanned aerial vehicles for damage inspection. U.S. Patent Number 11869090, filed May 17, 2021, and published online on January 9, 2024. Patent URL (for desktop use only): https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/external.html?q=(11869090)&db=USPAT&type=ids

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