Patent Issued for Information processing apparatus and method (USPTO 11900468): Sony Corporation

2024 MAR 05 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- A patent by the inventor Kimishima, Masato (Tokyo, Japan), filed on December 29, 2020, was published online on February 13, 2024, according to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx correspondents.

Patent number 11900468 is assigned to Sony Corporation (Tokyo, Japan).

The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background information supplied by the inventors: “BACKGROUND ART

“Conventionally, in automobile insurance, a technology to determine an insurance premium to be paid by a user who is an insured person according to a traffic violation history, an accident history, or the like of the user has been proposed (for example, see Patent Document 1).

“In such a technology, at the time of subscription for automobile insurance, an insurance service provider makes an inquiry to a user individual about a traffic violation history, an accident history, a continuous seat load time, an average daily travel distance, an average daily sleep time, and an average daily seat load time. Then, the insurance service provider determines an insurance premium according to the answer to the inquiry input by the user.

“If the insurance premium is determined for each user in this manner, the insurance premium of the user with a low accident rate can be preferentially treated and the burden on the user can be reduced.”

In addition to the background information obtained for this patent, NewsRx journalists also obtained the inventor’s summary information for this patent: “Problems to be Solved by the Invention

“However, it has been difficult to more appropriately obtain the insurance premium that is a compensation for the service as automobile insurance by the above-described technology.

“For example, the average daily sleep time answered by the user is information regarding a health state of the user, and the user who lives a healthy life should have a low accident rate. Therefore, it is conceivable to make the insurance premium cheap for the user who has along average daily sleep time.

“However, since the average daily sleep time input by the user is self-reported information, the information is not accurate. Therefore, it cannot be said that sufficiently appropriate insurance premiums have been determined for the users from such information.

“The present technology has been made in view of the foregoing, and enables obtainment of a more appropriate compensation for services.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. An information processing apparatus, comprising: circuitry configured to: receive authentication information that indicates that a user is authenticated; receive a transmission flag, wherein the transmission flag indicates whether or not to transmit the biological information of the authenticated user approved by a user’s setting operation, and the user’s setting operation is associated with at least one of a terminal device or a vehicle; receive user data from the at least one of the terminal device or the vehicle; store the user data in a memory; load the user data that indicates a behavior of the authenticated user, the biological information of the authenticated user, and a driving history of the authenticated user, wherein the behavior and the biological information correspond to information of the authenticated user until before detection of an entry of the authenticated user into the vehicle; calculate insurance information based on the transmission flag and the user data, wherein the insurance information comprises at least one of an insurance premium, an amount changed from an original insurance premium, or the insurance premium with the changed amount; and transmit the insurance information to the at least one of the terminal device or the vehicle.

“2. The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the biological information corresponds to the behavior of the authenticated user.

“3. The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the circuitry is further configured to calculate the insurance information based on the biological information and information regarding the entry of the authenticated user into the vehicle.

“4. The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the circuitry is further configured to determine, as the behavior of the authenticated user, the authenticated user associated with the terminal device is in one of a sleeping state or a resting state based on learning data and acceleration data obtained from the terminal device.

“5. The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the behavior of the authenticated user is based on time series data of registered position information of the authenticated user and a measured position of the authenticated user.

“6. The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the biological information comprises a value of at least one of a blood pressure, a heart rate, or a respiratory rate, or a degree of fatigue, and the degree of fatigue is based on a face recognition of the authenticated user.

“7. The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the circuitry is further configured to calculate a degree of safe driving based on: the time of the entry of the authenticated user into the vehicle, and health state time series data indicating a health state of the authenticated user.

“8. The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the circuitry is further configured to calculate a first discount amount of the insurance premium and a second discount amount of the insurance premium, the first discount amount of the insurance premium is based on the reception of the biological information of the authenticated user, the second discount amount of the insurance premium is based on non-reception of the biological information of the authenticated user, and the first discount is larger than the second discount amount.

“9. An information processing method, comprising: receiving authentication information that indicates that a user is authenticated; receiving a transmission flag, wherein the transmission flag indicates whether or not to transmit the biological information of the authenticated user approved by a user’s setting operation, and the user’s setting operation is associated with at least one of a terminal device or a vehicle; receiving user data from the at least one of the terminal device or the vehicle; storing the user data in a memory; loading the user data that indicates a behavior of the authenticated user, the biological information of the authenticated user, and a driving history of the authenticated user, wherein the behavior and the biological information corresponds to information of the authenticated user until before detection of an entry of the authenticated user into the vehicle; calculating based on the transmission flag and the user data, wherein the insurance information comprises at least one of an insurance premium, an amount changed from an original insurance premium, or the insurance premium with the changed amount; and transmitting the insurance information to the at least one of the terminal device or the vehicle.

“10. A non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored thereon, computer-executable instructions which, when executed by a computer, cause the computer to execute operations, the operations comprising: receiving authentication information that indicates that a user is authenticated; receiving a transmission flag, wherein the transmission flag indicates whether or not to transmit the biological information of the authenticated user approved by a user’s setting operation, and the user’s setting operation is associated with at least one of a terminal device or a vehicle; receiving user data from the at least one of the terminal device or the vehicle; storing the user data in a memory; loading the user data that indicates a behavior of the authenticated user, the biological information of the authenticated user, and a driving history of the authenticated user, wherein the behavior and the biological information corresponds to information of the authenticated user until before detection of an entry of the authenticated user into the vehicle; calculating insurance information based on the transmission flag and the user data, wherein the insurance information comprises at least one of an insurance premium, an amount changed from an original insurance premium, or the insurance premium with the changed amount; and transmitting the insurance information to the at least one of the terminal device or the vehicle.

“11. An information processing apparatus, comprising: circuitry configured to: receive authentication Information that indicates that a user is authenticated; receive a transmission flag, wherein the transmission flag indicates whether or not to transmit the biological information of the authenticated user approved by a user’s setting operation, and the user’s setting operation is associated with at least one of a terminal device or a vehicle; receive, from the at least one of the terminal device or the vehicle, user data that indicates a behavior of the authenticated user, the biological information of the authenticated user, and a driving history of the authenticated user, wherein the behavior and the biological information corresponds to information of the authenticated user until before detection of an entry of the authenticated user into the vehicle; calculate insurance information based on the transmission flag and the user data, wherein the insurance information comprises at least one of an insurance premium, an amount changed from an original insurance premium, or the insurance premium with the changed amount; and transmit the insurance information to the at least one of the terminal device or the vehicle.

“12. The information processing apparatus according to claim 11, wherein the circuitry is further configured to control display of the insurance information.

“13. The information processing apparatus according to claim 11, wherein the circuitry is further configured to transmit the insurance information to the terminal device of the authenticated user.

“14. An information processing method, comprising: receiving authentication information that indicates that a user is authenticated; receiving a transmission flag, wherein the transmission flag indicates whether or not to transmit the biological information of the authenticated user approved by a user’s setting operation, and the user’s setting operation is associated with at least one of a terminal device or a vehicle; receiving, from at the least one of the terminal device or the vehicle, user data that indicates a behavior of the authenticated user, the biological information of the authenticated user, and a driving history of the authenticated user, wherein the behavior and the biological information corresponds to information of the authenticated user until before detection of an entry of the authenticated user into the vehicle; calculating insurance information based on the transmission flag and the user data, wherein the insurance information comprises at least one of an insurance premium, an amount changed from an original insurance premium, and the insurance premium with the changed amount; and transmitting the insurance information to the at least one of the terminal device or the vehicle.”

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

URL and more information on this patent, see: Kimishima, Masato. Information processing apparatus and method. U.S. Patent Number 11900468, filed December 29, 2020, and published online on February 13, 2024. Patent URL (for desktop use only): https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/external.html?q=(11900468)&db=USPAT&type=ids

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