Patent Issued for Real property monitoring systems and methods (USPTO 11538240): United Services Automobile Association

2023 JAN 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 Buehrle, Amber K. (Phoenix, AZ, US), Devereaux, Ramsey (San Antonio, TX, US), Hertz, Michael (San Antonio, TX, US), Kyne, Michael (Saint Petersburg, FL, US), Matowitz, Theresa Marie (San Antonio, TX, US), Seigler, Steven Robert (Tampa, FL, US), filed on March 29, 2021, was published online on December 27, 2022.

The assignee for this patent, patent number 11538240, is United Services Automobile Association (San Antonio, Texas, United States).

Reporters obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “The present disclosure relates generally to determining characteristics of property, such as real property, that change over time. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to determining characteristics of property based at least in part on aerial images that are captured by cameras attached to, for example, unmanned aerial vehicles, airplanes, helicopters, or other aerial devices.

“When applying for insurance on property, such as real property, prospective insured parties are often asked to provide information relating to changes that have occurred with respect to the property, such as additional square footage, installation of pools, garages, sheds, and so forth, in order to ascertain appropriate insurance rates and coverage, as well as appraisals for mortgages, inspections, home valuations, and so forth, for example. However, often, prospective insured parties may not know the extent of the information that is needed, may be mistaken as to the veracity of the information they do know, and so forth. As such, the information gathering process may not provide complete results or, even worse, may provide erroneous results.

“This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art that may be related to various aspects of the present techniques, which are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present disclosure. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.”

In addition to obtaining background information on this patent, NewsRx editors also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “One or more specific embodiments will be described below. In an effort to provide a concise description of these embodiments, not all features of an actual implementation are described in the specification. It should be appreciated that in the development of any such actual implementation, as in any engineering or design project, numerous implementation-specific decisions must be made to achieve the developers’ specific goals, such as compliance with system-related and business-related constraints, which may vary from one implementation to another. Moreover, it should be appreciated that such a development effort might be complex and time consuming, but would nevertheless be a routine undertaking of design, fabrication, and manufacture for those of ordinary skill having the benefit of this disclosure.

“When introducing elements of various embodiments of the present disclosure, the articles “a,” “an,” and “the” are intended to mean that there are one or more of the elements. The terms “comprising,” “including,” and “having” are intended to be inclusive and mean that there may be additional elements other than the listed elements. Additionally, it should be understood that references to “one embodiment” or “an embodiment” of the present disclosure are not intended to be interpreted as excluding the existence of additional embodiments that also incorporate the recited features.

“As used herein, the term “insurance” may refer to a contract between an insurer, also known as an insurance company, and an insured, also known as a policyholder, in which the insurer agrees to indemnify the insured for specified losses, costs, or damage on specified terms and conditions in exchange of a certain premium amount paid by the insured. In a typical situation, when the insured suffers some loss for which he/she may have insurance the insured makes an insurance claim to request payment for the loss. It is to be appreciated for the purpose of the embodiments described herein, the insurance policy is not to be understood to be limited to a residential or homeowners insurance policy, but can be for a commercial, umbrella, and other insurance policies known by those skilled in the art.

“As used herein, the terms “automatic” and “automatically” may refer to actions that are performed by a computing device or computing system (e.g., of one or more computing devices) without human intervention. For example, automatically performed functions may be performed by computing devices or systems based solely on data stored on and/or received by the computing devices or systems despite the fact that no human users have prompted the computing devices or systems to perform such functions. As but one non-limiting example, the computing devices or systems may make decisions and/or initiate other functions based solely on the decisions made by the computing devices or systems, regardless of any other inputs relating to the decisions.

“As used herein, the terms “real time” and substantially real time” may refer to actions that are performed substantially simultaneously with other actions, without any human-perceptible delay between the actions. For example, two functions performed in substantially real time occur within seconds (or even within milliseconds) of each other. As but one non-limiting example, two functions performed in substantially real time occur within 1 second, within 0.1 second, within 0.01 second, and so forth, of each other.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A method, comprising: receiving, via a property characteristic determination system, a first aerial image that includes a view of a real estate property; identifying, via the property characteristic determination system, the real estate property included in the first aerial image; accessing, via the property characteristic determination system, a second aerial image from an aerial image database; formatting, via the property characteristic determination system, the first aerial image or the second aerial image to align one or more physical features captured by the first aerial image and the second aerial image, wherein formatting the first aerial image or the second aerial image comprises automatically filtering noise from the first aerial image or the second aerial image to facilitate alignment of the one or more physical features captured by the first aerial image and the second aerial image; determining, via the property characteristic determination system, one or more changes that have occurred to the real estate property based at least in part on a comparison of the first aerial image to the second aerial image; and automatically adjusting, via the property characteristic determination system, an insurance policy term for an insurance policy relating to the real estate property based at least in part on the one or more changes that have occurred to the real estate property.

“2. The method of claim 1, comprising: receiving, via the property characteristic determination system, data relating to one or more characteristics of the real estate property from one or more smart home devices associated with the real estate property; and determining, via the property characteristic determination system, the one or more changes that have occurred to the real estate property based at least in part on the data relating to the one or more characteristics.

“3. The method of claim 1, comprising: accessing, via the property characteristic determination system, data relating to one or more public records relating to the real estate property; and determining, via the property characteristic determination system, the one or more changes that have occurred to the real estate property based at least in part on the data relating to the one or more public records relating to the real estate property.

“4. The method of claim 1, comprising: accessing, via the property characteristic determination system, a supplemental image from a camera located in or around the real estate property; and determining, via the property characteristic determination system, the one or more changes that have occurred to the real estate property based at least in part on the supplemental image.

“5. The method of claim 1, comprising: determining, via the property characteristic determination system, a recommendation relating to the real estate property based at least in part on the first aerial image or the second aerial image; and communicating, via the property characteristic determination system, the recommendation to an owner of the real estate property via provision of instructions to an application being executed on an owner device associated with the owner.

“6. A system, comprising: a camera configured to capture a first aerial image that includes a view of a real estate property; and a property characteristic determination system comprising a processor configured to execute instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to: identify the real estate property included in the first aerial image; access a second aerial image from an aerial image database; format the first aerial image or the second aerial image to align one or more physical features captured by the first aerial image and the second aerial image, wherein formatting the first aerial image or the second aerial image comprises automatically filtering noise from the first aerial image or the second aerial image to facilitate alignment of the one or more physical features captured by the first aerial image and the second aerial image; determine one or more changes that have occurred to the real estate property based at least in part on a comparison of the first aerial image to the second aerial image; and automatically adjust an insurance policy term for an insurance policy relating to the real estate property based at least in part on the one or more changes that have occurred to the real estate property.

“7. The system of claim 6, wherein the instructions, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to: receive data relating to one or more characteristics of the real estate property from one or more smart home devices associated with the real estate property; and determine the one or more changes that have occurred to the real estate property based at least in part on the data relating to the one or more characteristics.

“8. The system of claim 6, wherein the instructions, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to: access data relating to one or more public records relating to the real estate property; and determine the one or more changes that have occurred to the real estate property based at least in part on the data relating to the one or more public records relating to the real estate property.

“9. The system of claim 6, wherein the instructions, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to: access a supplemental image from an additional camera located in or around the real estate property; and determine the one or more changes that have occurred to the real estate property based at least in part on the supplemental image.

“10. The system of claim 6, wherein the instructions, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to: determine a recommendation relating to the real estate property based at least in part on the first aerial image or the second aerial image; and communicate the recommendation to an owner of the real estate property via provision of instructions to an application being executed on an owner device associated with the owner.

“11. A method, comprising: accessing, via a property characteristic determination system, a first aerial image from an aerial image database, wherein the first aerial image includes a first view of a real estate property; receiving, via the property characteristic determination system, a second aerial image that includes a second view of the real estate property; identifying, via the property characteristic determination system, the real estate property included in the first and second aerial images; formatting, via the property characteristic determination system, the first aerial image or the second aerial image to align one or more physical features captured by the first and second aerial images, wherein formatting the first aerial image or the second aerial image comprises automatically filtering noise from the first aerial image or the second aerial image to facilitate alignment of the one or more physical features captured by the first aerial image and the second aerial image; determining, via the property characteristic determination system, one or more changes that have occurred to the real estate property based at least in part on a comparison of the first aerial image to the second aerial image; and automatically adjusting, via the property characteristic determination system, an insurance policy term for an insurance policy relating to the real estate property based at least in part on the one or more changes that have occurred to the real estate property.

“12. The method of claim 11, comprising: receiving, via the property characteristic determination system, data relating to properties of the real estate property from one or more smart home devices associated with the real estate property; and determining, via the property characteristic determination system, the one or more changes that have occurred to the real estate property based at least in part on the data received from the one or more smart home devices associated with the real estate property.

“13. The method of claim 11, comprising: accessing, via the property characteristic determination system, data relating to one or more public records relating to the real estate property; and determining, via the property characteristic determination system, the one or more changes that have occurred to the real estate property based at least in part on the data relating to the one or more public records relating to the real estate property.

“14. The method of claim 11, comprising: accessing, via the property characteristic determination system, a supplemental image from a camera located in or around the real estate property; and determining, via the property characteristic determination system, the one or more changes that have occurred to the real estate property based at least in part on the supplemental image.

“15. The method of claim 11, comprising: determining, via the property characteristic determination system, a recommendation relating to the real estate property based at least in part on the second aerial image; and communicating, via the property characteristic determination system, the recommendation to an owner of the real estate property via provision of instructions to an application being executed on an owner device associated with the owner.

“16. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more changes that have occurred to the real estate property include an addition or removal of one or more physical structures on the real estate property.

“17. The system of claim 6, wherein the one or more changes that have occurred to the real estate property include an addition or removal of one or more physical structures on the real estate property.

“18. The method of claim 11, wherein the one or more changes that have occurred to the real estate property include an addition or removal of one or more physical structures on the real estate property.”

For more information, see this patent: Buehrle, Amber K. Real property monitoring systems and methods. U.S. Patent Number 11538240, filed March 29, 2021, and published online on December 27, 2022. Patent URL (for desktop use only): https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/external.html?q=(11538240)&db=USPAT&type=ids

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