Patent Issued for Generating and transmitting parking instructions for autonomous and non-autonomous vehicles (USPTO 11425530): Allstate Insurance Company

2022 SEP 12 (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 Hayes, Howard (Glencoe, IL, US), Kumar, Surender (Palatine, IL, US), Madigan, Regina (Mountain View, CA, US), Slusar, Mark (Chicago, IL, US), filed on August 18, 2016, was published online on August 23, 2022.

The assignee for this patent, patent number 11425530, is Allstate Insurance Company (Northbrook, Illinois, United States).

Reporters obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Many vehicles include sophisticated sensors and advanced internal computer systems designed to monitor and control vehicle operations and driving functions, as well as other data including environmental conditions, parking histories, and the like. In addition, the use of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications have enabled systems to evaluate data from not only one vehicle in communication with an evaluation system, but a plurality of vehicles. This technology may be used to improve driver safety and an overall driving experience for autonomous, semi-autonomous and non-autonomous vehicles.

“In particular, identifying parking locations near to a user’s destination may be difficult, especially in large cities where parking availability may be limited. Accordingly, the processing of data from various sensors in vehicle and non-vehicle structures, may aid in efficiently identifying available parking, generating a parking recommendation and/or communicating the recommendation to a vehicle.”

In addition to obtaining background information on this patent, NewsRx editors 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 methods, computer-readable media, systems, and apparatuses for receiving data from a plurality of sensors and using the data, as well as other data, to generate a parking recommendation for a first vehicle. For example, data may be received from sensors associated with a first vehicle for which a parking recommendation may be generated. Data may also be received from sensors associated with other vehicles. Additionally or alternatively, data may be received from one or more structures or other non-vehicle devices (e.g., buildings, parking garages, parking lots, roadways, bridges, and the like). In some examples, historical parking data may be extracted from a database. For instance, data related to accidents in a parking area, crime statistics in a geographic area, and the like may be extracted.

“The collected and extracted data may be used to generate a parking recommendation for the first vehicle. In some examples, pre-stored user preferences, such as a distance to walk between the parking location and a destination or a model year of vehicle next to which the first vehicle should park may be used in generating the parking recommendation as well. The parking recommendation may then be transmitted to a computing device associated with the first vehicle or user associated with the first vehicle and may be displayed on the computing device.

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

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A parking analysis system comprising: a processing unit comprising a processor; and a memory unit storing computer-executable instructions, which when executed by the processing unit, cause the parking analysis system to: receive, from a first plurality of sensors within an autonomous vehicle, data related to a location of the autonomous vehicle and weather conditions surrounding the autonomous vehicle; receive, from a second plurality of sensors, data related to a plurality of locations being evaluated for parking the autonomous vehicle, wherein the data related to a parking location in the plurality of locations being evaluated comprises an availability of at least one parking spot at the parking location, weather conditions of the parking location determined using at least one sensor in the second plurality of sensors, lighting conditions of the parking location determined using at least one sensor in the second plurality of sensors, and at least two locations in the plurality of locations are in a distinct geographic area; receive, from a third plurality of sensors, data related to whether a parking space is available in proximity to one or more other vehicles via vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication; query a parking database to identify historical data associated with the autonomous vehicle and the plurality of locations being evaluated for parking the autonomous vehicle; query the parking database to identify data associated with a parking risk for the plurality of locations being evaluated for parking the autonomous vehicle; query the parking database to identify a set of parking locations recommended to other vehicles distinct from the autonomous vehicle, wherein each parking location in the set of parking locations comprises at least one parking spot for parking a vehicle; based on (1) the data related to the location of the autonomous vehicle and the weather conditions surrounding the autonomous vehicle, (2) the data related to the plurality of locations being evaluated for parking the autonomous vehicle and the weather conditions in the plurality of locations, (3) the data associated with the parking risk of the plurality of locations, (4) the data related to whether the parking space is available in proximity to the one or more other vehicles, (5) the historical data, and (6) a target destination for the autonomous vehicle, determine, in real-time, a recommended parking location and a cost associated with parking the autonomous vehicle in the recommended parking location, the recommended parking location being one location of the plurality of locations being evaluated for parking the autonomous vehicle, distinct from the parking locations in the set of parking locations recommended to other vehicles, and within a threshold distance of the target destination, the threshold distance determined based on the weather conditions in the plurality of locations; generate driving instructions to instruct the autonomous vehicle to travel to the recommended parking location; transmit driving instructions to the recommended parking location and cost to an autonomous vehicle control computing device associated with the autonomous vehicle; cause the recommended parking location and cost to be displayed on a display of the autonomous vehicle; receive an environmental event associated with the recommended parking location detected by the autonomous vehicle control computing device; in response to the received environmental event, determine, in real-time, a second recommended parking location that avoids the environmental event; transmit a second set of driving instructions to the second recommended parking location and second cost to the autonomous vehicle control computing device; and cause the second recommended parking location and the second cost to be displayed on the display of the autonomous vehicle.

“2. The parking analysis system of claim 1, wherein the memory unit further stores instructions that, when executed, cause the parking analysis system to: receive, from the third plurality of sensors, data related to locations of the one or more other vehicles and conditions surrounding the one or more other vehicles, wherein the recommended parking location and a cost associated with parking the autonomous vehicle in the recommended parking location and the second recommended parking location and second cost are further based on the data related to locations of the one or more other vehicles and the conditions surrounding the one or more other vehicles.

“3. The parking analysis system of claim 1, wherein the data is received from the second plurality of sensors via vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications.

“4. The parking analysis system of claim 1, wherein: the memory unit further including instructions that, when executed, cause the parking analysis system to receive user input identifying at least one parking preference for the autonomous vehicle, wherein the recommended parking location and a cost associated with parking the autonomous vehicle in the recommended parking location and the second recommended parking location are further based on the at least one parking preference.

“5. The parking analysis system of claim 4, the memory unit further including instructions that, when executed, cause the parking analysis system to: identify, based on the data received from at least one sensor of the first plurality of sensors and the second plurality of sensors, a first environmental condition; and responsive to identifying the first environmental condition, automatically modifying the at least one parking preference.

“6. The parking analysis system of claim 1, wherein the cost associated with parking the autonomous vehicle in the recommended parking location is based, at least in part, on the parking risk associated with parking the autonomous vehicle in the recommended parking location.

“7. The parking analysis system of claim 1, wherein the instructions, when executed by the processing unit, further cause the parking analysis system to: obtain an acceptance of the displayed recommended parking location; and based on the acceptance, provide the recommended parking location to the autonomous vehicle control computing device of the autonomous vehicle, wherein the autonomous vehicle control computing device causes the autonomous vehicle to navigate to the recommended parking location via a route generated based on the recommended parking location and the weather conditions received by the first plurality of sensors in the autonomous vehicle.”

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

For more information, see this patent: Hayes, Howard. Generating and transmitting parking instructions for autonomous and non-autonomous vehicles. U.S. Patent Number 11425530, filed August 18, 2016, and published online on August 23, 2022. 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=11425530.PN.&OS=PN/11425530RS=PN/11425530

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