Patent Issued for Subsurface Imaging System and Method for Inspecting the Condition of a Structure (USPTO 9851440)

Journal of Engineering

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Journal of Engineering -- A patent by the inventors Boyer, Patrick H. (Bloomington, IL); Tofte, Nathan L. (Downs, IL); Jordan, II, Jackie O. (Bloomington, IL), filed on June 1, 2016, was published online on December 26, 2017, according to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by VerticalNews correspondents.

Patent number 9851440 is assigned to State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company (Bloomington, IL).

The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background information supplied by the inventors: "After an accident or loss, property owners typically file claims with their insurance companies. In response to these claims, insurance agents or representatives investigate the claims to determine the extent of damage and/or loss, ultimately providing their clients with appropriate compensation.

"Determining and documenting the extent of damage can be risky for the appraiser. For example, in a situation where a structure has experienced roof damage, appraisers typically climb onto the roof to evaluate the damage. When climbing onto the roof and maneuvering around the roof for the inspection, the appraiser runs a risk of injury, especially in difficult weather conditions, where the roof may be slippery because of rain, snow, and/or ice and winds may be severe.

"Even if the appraiser is not injured, the inspection process is time consuming and inefficient. Once on the roof, appraisers may take a digital picture of the damaged area. Afterwards, the picture is typically attached to an electronic claim file where it can later be analyzed by an appraiser to estimate the extent of damage to the structure. Two-dimensional digital pictures or video of a roof or structure often provide inadequate detail for a thorough inspection of a structure. Issues like poor image quality resulting from camera movement, bad lighting or out-of-focus images can make it difficult to estimate the condition of a property based on an image. To address some of these issues, insurance companies may use 3D-scanners to get a more detailed view of the surface of the roof.

"However, both two-dimensional images (2D) and many three-dimensional (3D) surface scans, for example, are unable to capture damage that may have occurred beneath the surface of a roof (e.g., damage to lower layers of shingles, moisture accumulation, rotting of lower layers). For example, a fiberglass mesh layer of a roof that is disposed beneath the surface of the roof may be damaged by impacts and cause a visible divot. Heat from the sun on the roof, however, often causes such divots to reset, making it appear as though the fiberglass mesh layer was not damaged. As a result, such damage to subsurface structures often goes undetected during 2D and 3D surface scans, interfering with, if not preventing, accurate estimates and appraisals of the condition of a structure and/or damage to the structure."

In addition to the background information obtained for this patent, VerticalNews journalists also obtained the inventors' summary information for this patent: "A system and method of inspecting the condition of a structure is disclosed. In one example, the method of inspecting a structure includes deploying one or more three-dimensional (3D) scanners to scan a structure, wherein the one or more 3D scanners are communicatively coupled to a memory; and detecting 3D information about a subsurface of the structure by implementing a sensing device including one or more of a radar sensing device or an ultrasonic detection device coupled to the one or more 3D scanners. Implementing the sensing device includes: transmitting, via at least one transmitter, pulses to at least one point of a plurality of points of the subsurface of the structure; receiving, via at least one receiver, one or more reflected signals from at least one point of a plurality of points of the subsurface of the structure; and determining, via one or more processors, a distance from one of the radar sensing device or the ultrasonic detection device to at least one point of the plurality of points of the subsurface of the structure based on the at least one received reflected signal. The method further comprises generating, at the one or more 3D scanners, a plurality of 3D data points, wherein at least one point of the plurality of 3D data points correspond to at least one point of a plurality of points in the subsurface of the structure detected by the radar sensor device or the ultrasonic detection device during the scan of the structure. The method still further comprises causing one or more processors communicatively coupled to the memory to generate an estimation of the condition of the subsurface of the structure based on the plurality of 3D data points.

"In another example of the present disclosure, a property inspection system for inspecting the condition of a structure comprises one or more three-dimensional (3D) scanners adapted to scan a surface of the structure and a sensing device including one or more of a radar sensing device or an ultrasonic detection device coupled to the one or more 3D scanners. Each of the radar sensing device and the ultrasonic detection device has at least one transmitter, at least one receiver, and at least one processor. In addition, each sensing device is adapted to detect 3D information about a subsurface of the structure by: (1) transmitting, via the at least one transmitter, pulses to at least one point of a plurality of points of the subsurface of the structure; (2) receiving, via at least one receiver, one or more reflected pulses from at least one point of a plurality of points of the subsurface of the structure; and (3) determining, via at least one processor, a distance from one or more devices to at least one point of the plurality of points of the subsurface of the structure based on the at least one received reflected pulse. Further, the system comprises at least one processor adapted to generate 3D data points corresponding to the 3D information detected by one or more of the radar sensing device or the ultrasonic sensing device, and a memory, communicably coupled to the one or more 3D scanners, adapted to store 3D data points generated by the one or more processors and the 3D information detected by the radar sensing device or the ultrasonic detection device. Still further, the system comprises a network interface, communicably coupled to the one or more processors, adapted to transmit the 3D data points to a data analysis system for estimating the condition of the subsurface of the structure."

URL and more information on this patent, see: Boyer, Patrick H.; Tofte, Nathan L.; Jordan, II, Jackie O.. Subsurface Imaging System and Method for Inspecting the Condition of a Structure. U.S. Patent Number 9851440, filed June 1, 2016, and published online on December 26, 2017. 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=9851440.PN.&OS=PN/9851440RS=PN/9851440

Keywords for this news article include: State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company.