Patent Issued for Hub for automated recovery after a critical event in shared mobility services (USPTO 11449946): Allstate Insurance Company

2022 OCT 10 (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 Gutsell, Christopher Paul (Gurnee, IL, US), Harasymczuk, Rebecca (Chicago, IL, US), Kelsh, John P. (Antioch, IL, US), Walsh, Connor (Lake Forest, IL, US), filed on January 10, 2020, was published online on September 20, 2022.

The assignee for this patent, patent number 11449946, is Allstate Insurance Company (Northbrook, Illinois, United States).

Reporters obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “In the shared mobility industry, accidents can be a persistent problem. Drivers operating a vehicle for a shared mobility service (e.g., ride sharing services, courier network services (CNS), microtransit services, ride sourcing services, scooter sharing services, alternative transit services, bike sharing services, etc.) may be worried about the consequences of their vehicle facing an accident or other incident (e.g., a critical event). For example, the driver may be concerned about safety, how much the critical event would cost the driver, how the critical event may affect the driver’s rating, and/or whether the driver may end up in a lawsuit as a result of the critical event. Furthermore, a driver may worry about his or her own financial security (e.g., income) in light of the potentially debilitating costs incurred by an accident or incident to the driver’s vehicle.

“When drivers do face a critical event, they may become involved in long and inefficient processes for reporting the accident, collecting requested data, and/or submitting claims for recovery. For example, a driver may need to talk to a number of parties over the phone, e.g., the shared mobility company, an insurance provider, police, etc., and repeat information, which may lead to frustration and added stress. Furthermore, there may a discrepancy of information sent or received from the various parties.

“The present disclosure may address one or more of the shortcomings described above.”

In addition to obtaining background information on this patent, NewsRx editors also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “In light of the foregoing background, the following presents a simplified summary of the present disclosure in order to provide a basic understanding of some aspects of the features described herein. This summary is not an extensive overview of all of the features described herein. The following summary merely presents some concepts in a simplified form as a prelude to the more detailed description provided below.

“Systems and methods are described for using a centralized contact point (e.g., hub) for a user for automated recovery after a critical event in shared mobility services. By allowing a single point of contact, the centralized contact point or hub may improve the partner driver’s experience seeking insurance claim recovery, may optimize claims efficiency, and may assist in building more scalable and extensible platforms for the shared mobility industry. One example method comprises: receiving, by a computing device having at least one processor and from a user device via a communication network, a notification of a critical event and the vehicle information of a vehicle associated with the critical event; causing, by the computing device, the user device to generate a user interface for a hub-based automated recovery; receiving, by the computing device, natural language input associated with a first aspect of the critical event; parsing, by the computing device, the natural language input associated with the first aspect of the critical event to identify a first value corresponding to the first aspect of the critical event; determining, by the computing device, and based on the first value, a second aspect of the critical event; prompting, via the user interface and based on the determined second aspect, the user device to send multimedia content associated with the second aspect of the critical event; receiving, by the computing device and from the user device, the multimedia content associated with the second aspect of the critical event; determining, based on the multimedia content associated with the second aspect of the critical event, a second value corresponding to the second aspect of the critical event; and generating, via the user interface and based on the first value corresponding to the first aspect and a second value corresponding to the second aspect, a representation of the critical event.

“In accordance with other embodiments of the present disclosure, the method may further include determining, based on the vehicle information, one or more passenger device identifications corresponding to one or more passenger devices associated with one or more passengers in the vehicle during the critical event; establishing, based on the one or more passenger device identifications, connections to the one or more passenger devices; prompting, via a user interface on each of the one or more passenger devices, the passengers to input passenger-specific values corresponding to the first aspect of the critical event; and receiving, from each of the one or more passenger devices, a passenger-specific value corresponding to the first aspect of the critical event.

“In accordance with other embodiments of the present disclosure, an example system comprises: a first device and a second device. A first device may comprise: one or more first processors; and first memory storing first computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the one or more first processors, may cause the first device to: receive, from a second device via a communication network, a notification of a critical event and the vehicle information of a vehicle associated with the critical event; cause the second device to generate a user interface for a hub-based automated recovery; receive natural language input associated with a first aspect of the critical event; parse the natural language input associated with the first aspect of the critical event to identify a first value corresponding to the first aspect of the critical event; determine, and based on the first value, a second aspect of the critical event; receive, from the second device, the multimedia content associated with the second aspect of the critical event; determine, based on the multimedia content associated with the second aspect of the critical event, a second value corresponding to the second aspect of the critical event; and generate, via the user interface and based on the first value corresponding to the first aspect and a second value corresponding to the second aspect, a representation of the critical event.

“The second device may comprise: one or more second processors; and second memory storing second computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the one or more second processors, may cause the second device to: send, to the first device, the notification of the critical event and the vehicle information of the vehicle associated with the critical event; generate the user interface for the hub-based automated recovery; send, to the first device, the natural language input associated with the first aspect of the critical event; send, to the first device, the multimedia content associated with the second aspect of the critical event; and receive, via the user interface, the representation of the critical event.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A method comprising: communicatively coupling, by a computing device having at least one processor, to a user device via a communication network, the user device configured to generate a user interface; receiving, by the computing device from the user device via the communication network, a notification of a critical event and vehicle information of a vehicle associated with the critical event; generating, by the computing device, a list of aspects corresponding with the critical event; transmitting, by the computing device to the user device, a request for an input; receiving, by the computing device, the input, wherein the input is a natural language input; converting the natural language input to a natural language data using a processor on a natural language processing system on the computing device; analyzing, by the computing device, the natural language data to identify portions of the natural language data corresponding to the critical event; mapping, by the computing device, the portions of the natural language data corresponding to the critical event to at least one aspect from the list of aspects, the at least one aspect corresponding to a damage related aspect; generating, by the computing device and based on the mapping of the natural language data corresponding to the critical event to the at least one aspect from the list of aspects, a first representation of the critical event; determining, by the computing device, a response certainty score corresponding to the first representation of the critical event based on the mapping of the natural language data; comparing, by the computing device, the response certainty score to a confidence threshold; based on determining that the confidence value does not exceed the confidence threshold, prompting, via the user interface, the user device to send multimedia content associated with the at least one aspect corresponding to the critical event; receiving, by the computing device and from the user device, the multimedia content associated with the critical event; converting the multimedia content associated with the at least one aspect of the critical event to a multimedia data associated with the at least one aspect of the critical event using a processor on an image processing system on the computing device that analyzes the multimedia content; performing, by the processor on the image processing system, image analysis on the image data; generating, based on the image analysis of the multimedia data associated with the at least one aspect of the critical event, a second representation of the critical event; updating, by the computing device based on the second representation of the critical event, the response certainty score to satisfy the confidence value threshold; and determining, by the computing device, a fault assessment for the critical event.

“2. The method of claim 1, further comprising: receiving, by the computing device and from the user device, an approval of the second representation of the critical event.

“3. The method of claim 2, further comprising: generating, by the computing device and via the user interface, a damage assessment based on either the image analysis of the multimedia data or the identified portion of the natural language data corresponding to the critical event.

“4. The method of claim 1, wherein the generating the damage assessment further comprises: identifying a trained machine learning algorithm based on the at least one aspect; and inputting the natural language data and the multimedia data into the trained machine learning algorithm to generate the damage assessment.

“5. The method of claim 3, further comprising: receiving, by the computing device and from the user device, an indication to generate an insurance claim based on the damage assessment; and generating, by the computing device and via the user interface, the insurance claim based on the damage assessment.

“6. The method of claim 1, further comprising, after the generating the second representation of the critical event: receiving, by the computing device and from the user device, a disapproval of the second representation of the critical event; receiving, by the computing device and from the user device, one or both of, additional natural language input associated with the critical event, or additional multimedia content associated with the critical event; generating, via the user interface, a third representation of the critical event, wherein the third representation of the critical event is different from the first representation of the critical event and the second representation of the critical event; and receiving, by the computing device and via the user interface, an approval of the third representation of the critical event.

“7. The method of claim 1, further comprising, prior to the receiving the natural language input: prompting, by the computing device and via the user interface, the natural language input associated with the critical event.

“8. The method of claim 1, wherein the user device is associated with a partner driver of the first vehicle.

“9. The method of claim 1, further comprising: determining, based on the vehicle information, one or more passenger device identifications corresponding to one or more passenger devices associated with one or more passengers in the vehicle during the critical event; establishing, based on the one or more passenger device identifications, connections to the one or more passenger devices; prompting, via a user interface on each of the one or more passenger devices, the passengers to input either natural language input or multimedia content corresponding to the of the critical event; and receiving, from each of the one or more passenger devices, either natural language input or multimedia content corresponding to the critical event.

“10. The method of claim 1, wherein the notification of the critical event comprises one or more of a time range or a geographic area of the critical event.

“11. The method of claim 10, further comprising: determining, by the computing device and based on the notification of the critical event the response certainty score based on: weather data associated with the critical event; maintenance history of the vehicle associated with the critical event; velocity or acceleration of the vehicle associated with the critical event; vehicle trajectory of the vehicle associated with the critical event; or road conditions associated with the critical event.

“12. The method of claim 1, further comprising: establishing, based on the vehicle identification of the vehicle, a connection with a telematics device of the vehicle; and receiving, by the computing device and from a telematics device of the vehicle associated with the critical event vehicle data associated with the critical event.

“13. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one aspect of the critical event is associated with a second vehicle associated with the critical event, wherein the vehicle information of a vehicle associated with the critical event comprises a vehicle identification of the second vehicle associated with the critical event, and further comprising: identifying, based on the vehicle identification of the second vehicle associated with the critical event, a second user device associated with a driver of the second vehicle associated with the critical event; and receiving, by the computing device and from the second user device, the input.”

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

For more information, see this patent: Gutsell, Christopher Paul. Hub for automated recovery after a critical event in shared mobility services. U.S. Patent Number 11449946, filed January 10, 2020, and published online on September 20, 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=11449946.PN.&OS=PN/11449946RS=PN/11449946

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