Patent Issued for Telematics system, apparatus and method (USPTO 11338815): United Services Automobile Association

2022 JUN 14 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- From Alexandria, Virginia, NewsRx journalists report that a patent by the inventors Brown, Christine Marie (Helotes, TX, US), Devereaux, Ramsey (San Antonio, TX, US), Dohner, Robert Kenneth (San Antonio, TX, US), Healy, Jodi Jean (Johns Creek, GA, US), Hillman, James P. (Kennewick, WA, US), Prasad, Bharat (San Antonio, TX, US), filed on November 1, 2017, was published online on May 24, 2022.

The patent’s assignee for patent number 11338815 is United Services Automobile Association (San Antonio, Texas, United States).

News editors obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Current methods of providing insurance are based on statistical analysis of a multitude of risk factors related to a wide variety of personal and demographic information associated with an insured. While these methods have become more sophisticated over time, they still have their limitations. As an example, the cost of an automobile insurance policy is often based on the age and sex of the insured, their primary geographic location, as well as the class of their vehicle. Other factors, such as the number of miles the insured drives in a year, and the ratio of business to personal miles driven, is increasingly being taken into consideration. All of these risk factors are then typically compared to the accident incidence and claim rates of a pool of drivers that are the same sex and age group, drive the same class of vehicle, live in the same geographical area, and drive a similar number of miles every year. These comparisons generally provide useful information related to the frequency, and cost, of claims made by members of the insured pool. However, these approaches remain generalized and are not oriented to the travel behavior of a specific insured or insured vehicle.

“Latest developments in automotive electronics are dealing with the automatic monitoring of the state of a vehicle such as a car, bus, train, airplane, or any similar vehicle. Such monitoring is based on the integration of numerous sensors into the vehicle such that important functional parts and components may be monitored. It is becoming of increasing interest to collect a variety of information, regarding different aspects of a vehicle, which may have different applications depending on their usage.

“The use of telematics in automobiles has become more common in recent years, particularly as implemented with in-car navigation systems.”

As a supplement to the background information on this patent, NewsRx correspondents also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “The purpose and advantages of the below described illustrated embodiments will be set forth in and apparent from the description that follows. Additional advantages of the illustrated embodiments will be realized and attained by the devices, systems and methods particularly pointed out in the written description and claims hereof, as well as from the appended drawings.

“To achieve these and other advantages and in accordance with the purpose of the illustrated embodiments, in one aspect, a system and process for using telematics data to determine a vehicle operator is described in which telematics data is captured from a telematics device which retrieves data from a device which is associated with a particular vehicle and a plurality of vehicle operators. A driver electronic signature is determined from the captured telematics data and then compared to the determined driver signatures stored in memory and associated with the vehicle from which the telematics data is captured. A vehicle operator is then determined from comparing the determined driver signature with driver signatures stored in memory.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A non-transitory computer-usable medium embodying computer program code, which when executed by a computer, causes the computer to perform a process of using telematics data to determine a vehicle operator, the process comprising: capturing telematics data from a telematics device retrieving data from a vehicle; determining a driver electronic signature from the captured telematics data; determining a vehicle operator based upon the determined driver electronic signature; determining a loss of job for the determined vehicle operator from the captured telematics data based upon detection of the determined vehicle operator no longer traveling to a workplace associated with the determined vehicle operator; determining whether the loss of job has caused the determined vehicle operator to be a more risk prone driver by determining a drive score for the determined vehicle operator when the loss of job has been determined for the determined vehicle operator; and transmitting a signal to a user device associated with the determined vehicle operator causing one or more features on the user device to be disabled while the vehicle is being operated.

“2. The non-transitory computer-usable medium as recited in claim 1, wherein the captured data is transmitted from the telematics device to the computer via a cellular telecommunications network.

“3. The non-transitory computer-usable medium as recited in claim 1, wherein the user device is a smart phone device.

“4. The non-transitory computer-usable medium as recited in claim 1, wherein the one or more disabled features includes email functionality.

“5. The non-transitory computer-usable medium as recited in claim 1, wherein the one or more disabled features includes texting functionality.”

For additional information on this patent, see: Brown, Christine Marie. Telematics system, apparatus and method. U.S. Patent Number 11338815, filed November 1, 2017, and published online on May 24, 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=11338815.PN.&OS=PN/11338815RS=PN/11338815

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