Patent Issued for Universal car damage determination with make/model invariance (USPTO 11386543): Tractable Ltd.
2022 JUL 29 (NewsRx) -- By a
The patent’s inventors are Aktas, Rusen (
This patent was filed on
From the background information supplied by the inventors, news correspondents obtained the following quote: “Typically, and as shown in FIG. 1, when a vehicle is involved in an accident (or is damaged) 105, the vehicle or its driver will be insured, and the driver will contact the relevant insurance company 110 to make a claim following a typical claim procedure 100.
“The insurance company’s estimation team 135 will then need to assess the damage to the vehicle and approve any claim, and the driver or insurer will then arrange for the vehicle to be repaired 145. Alternatively, the insurance company may make a cash settlement 150 in place of arranging or paying for repairs or may make a decision that the vehicle is a total loss 140 and compensate the insured party accordingly or arrange for a replacement vehicle to be procured.
“As shown in FIG. 1, the claim procedure 100 following an accident 105 requires the driver or insured party to call their insurer 110, and personnel at the insurer will follow a script 115 to receive and process the claim.
“As part of the script 115, the insurer will obtain from the driver or insured party some information about the accident 105. Typically, the insurer will be provided with information about the insured person 120 (which may also include details of the vehicle and its condition etc that are provided during the call, or which are stored in the insurer’s database and retrieved following receipt of the details of the insured person); details of the crash or accident 125, for example the circumstances and extent of the damage; and photos of the damage 130.
“The photos of the damage 130 are typically taken by the driver or the insured party and can be of varying quality and comprehensiveness. Typically, photos are taken using phones equipped with cameras. Various problems can arise from this approach, including that too few photos are taken and provided to the insurer. Also, the photos taken may not be sufficiently well composed or may be of low quality due to the quality of the camera used to take the photos or the skill of the user.
“The photos of the damage 130 can be provided to the insurer either via e-mail, facsimile or post, for example. This means there is typically a delay in the receipt of the photos 130 by the insurer, thus delaying the processing of the claim by the insurer and slowing down the decision-making process as to whether the damage is a total loss 140, or whether a cash settlement 150 can be offered, or whether to arrange or allow the driver or insured part to arrange for repairs to the vehicle 145.
“As part of the claim procedure, and more specifically the claim review procedure which is carried out by the insurer to verify the costs of the proposed repair work by manually assessing data provided by the client and any proposed repairer, the insurer may request further information or claim data to be provided from the driver or insured party regarding the accident. This may include details of the vehicle and its condition prior to any damage etc. These are typically provided during a telephone call or are obtained having been stored in the insurer’s database, but sometimes requires the insurer to contact the insured party in a follow up telephone call, letter or e-mail requesting the further details. Further, the insurer will require sufficient details of the accident to be provided, along with sufficient photographs of the damage for example, so this must be obtained during the first and any subsequent contact with the insured party. The process of obtaining sufficient information can be slow, especially if further requests for information are made in separate subsequent contacts with the insured party, and thus can significantly delay the processing of an insurance claim. Further, the proposed repairer may be required to send details of the proposed repairs, including for example the labour tasks as well as any parts or materials costs, to the insurer for approval prior to commencing work. The insurer can then assess whether the claim is covered by the relevant policy under which the claim is made and determine whether the estimated costs of repair can be verified and/or approved as may be appropriate.
“Various tools and processes have been developed to assist vehicle repair businesses and vehicle insurers respectively to prepare and approve repair proposals for damaged vehicles, for example as a result of the vehicle being involved in an accident.
“Vehicle repair businesses need to be able to itemise both the labour required and the specific parts required in order to repair the vehicle, and then submit this for approval to an insurer where the repair is covered by an insurance policy. Due to the large number of different possible makes and models that might require repair, and the optional extras that might have been fitted to the vehicle to be repaired, vehicle repair businesses typically have to use a commercial database to identify the correct make, model, year of manufacture and options fitted in order to correctly identify the parts that would need to be ordered if any need replacement.
“Insurers typically require vehicle repair businesses to submit evidence of the damage to each vehicle and a detailed repair proposal that itemises the parts to be ordered and the respective costs of each part along with detailed itemisation of the labour tasks and time that will be required to carry out any repairs or replacement of parts. Preparing such detailed repair proposals manually typically takes vehicle repair businesses a significant amount of time.
“In different jurisdictions, different approaches are taken by both vehicle repair businesses (in respect of how repairs are carried out, what labour is deemed to be required, and preferences as to whether to repair or replace parts, for example) and insurers (in respect of what policies are applied when approving or rejecting proposed repairs, for example), so depending on a variety of factors such as commercial pressures, regulation, consumer preference and typical insurance coverage. Thus, detailed repair proposals will differ between jurisdictions and what insurers are prepared to approve in a detailed repair proposal will also differ between jurisdictions.
“Insurers, however, typically perform manual reviews on proposed repairs that are submitted for approval by vehicle repair businesses. As a result, the manual review process either requires a large workforce to perform the task of reviewing each submitted repair proposal or becomes a bottleneck in the repair approval process. For vehicle repair businesses, manual review can result in several disadvantages including delay in being able to begin repair work; further delays if the repair proposal is rejected by the insurer; and having to store customer vehicles for longer periods than necessary resulting in both higher storage space requirements and a higher probability of dissatisfied customers.
“Across all jurisdictions, a variety of the above-described problems can result from manual preparation of proposed vehicle repairs and manual review of the proposed vehicle repairs by insurers.
“Improvements to the claim procedure would enable repairs to be completed sooner and for insurers to reach decisions faster and more efficiently.”
Supplementing the background information on this patent, NewsRx reporters also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “Aspects and/or embodiments seek to provide a computer-implemented method of generating one or more repair estimates from one or more photos of a damaged vehicle and comparing the generated estimate(s) to one or more input repair estimates to verify the one or more input repair estimates.
“According to a first aspect, there is provided a computer-implemented method of generating a damage classification for a vehicle, comprising the steps of: receiving vehicle input data, the vehicle input data comprising at least a plurality of images wherein some of the images comprise image data of damage to the vehicle; using a plurality of classifiers, each determining at least one classification of the damage to the vehicle, each said classification being determined for each of a plurality of normalised parts of the vehicle; and outputting the determined classifications of the damage to the vehicle.
“Determining a classification of damage per normalised parts of a vehicle can provide a method of universally identifying damage to a vehicle that can be used to assess or verify vehicle damage or vehicle damage repair estimates, and focussing on damage to generic but typical parts of the vehicle can allow a more accurate assessment of damage to be determined than by simply assessing damage for a certain section or zone of a vehicle.
“Optionally, the vehicle input data further comprises claim input data wherein claim input data comprises details of one or more proposed parts and labour operations for repairing the damage to the vehicle; further comprising the step of determining the parts and labour operations of the vehicle input data that are relevant to each of the plurality of normalised parts of the vehicle; and wherein the step of outputting the determined classifications comprises verifying that the classification determined for each of the plurality of normalised parts of the vehicle corresponds to the proposed parts and labour operations for repairing the damage to the vehicle determined to be relevant for each of the plurality of normalised parts of the vehicle.
“Parsing the claim input data to identify what proposed repairs in a repair estimate relate to each of a normalised set of parts of the vehicle can allow for a comparison of the repair estimate to the determined classification of damage per normalised part/portion to verify the repair estimate based on the determined damage to the vehicle.”
The claims supplied by the inventors are:
“1. A computer-implemented method of generating a damage classification for a vehicle, comprising: receiving vehicle input data, the vehicle input data comprising at least a plurality of images wherein some of the images comprise image data of damage to the vehicle; using a plurality of classifiers on the vehicle input data that are each specific to a different one of a plurality of normalized parts of the vehicle, each determining at least one classification of the damage to the vehicle and each of the plurality of images of the vehicle input data are processed by each of the plurality of classifiers, wherein each classifier is generic with respect to a make and model of the vehicle; and outputting the determined classifications of the damage to the vehicle.
“2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the vehicle input data further comprises claim input data wherein claim input data comprises details of one or more proposed parts and labor operations for repairing the damage to the vehicle, the method further comprising: determining the parts and labor operations of the vehicle input data that are relevant to each of the plurality of normalized parts of the vehicle; and wherein outputting the determined classifications comprises verifying that the classifications determined for each of the plurality of normalized parts of the vehicle corresponds to the proposed parts and labor operations for repairing the damage to the vehicle determined to be relevant for each of the plurality of normalized parts of the vehicle.
“3. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein the determining the parts and labor operations of the vehicle input data that are relevant to each of the plurality of normalized parts of the vehicle comprises using computer-implemented natural language processing techniques.
“4. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein at least some of the plurality of classifiers are arranged hierarchically.
“5. The computer-implemented method of claim 4, wherein the hierarchical arrangement comprises at least three classifiers arranged hierarchically.
“6. The computer-implemented method of claim 4, wherein the hierarchical arrangement further comprises one or more rules engines and/or databases.
“7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising using domain adaption techniques for outputting a classification suitable for further geographies.
“8. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the classifiers further comprise a secondary classifier trained on specific vehicle parts that is operable to generate damage representations of the specific vehicle parts, wherein the specific vehicle parts are specific to any or any combination of a predetermined make, model and year of vehicle.
“9. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising the use of any or any combination of: a computer vision damage assessment model; a repair/replace prediction model; a labor hours prediction model; a blend prediction model; a paint rules model; a strip model; a remove and install model.
“10. The computer-implemented method of claim 9, wherein the any or any combination of: a computer vision damage assessment model; a repair/replace prediction model; a labor hours prediction model; a blend prediction model; a paint rules model; a strip model; a remove and install model are used as one or more secondary models that receive input from said one or more classifiers.
“11. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising using rules specific to a jurisdiction, market or geography, optionally in respect of the acceptable proportion of repair and replace decisions.
“12. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising using a rule engine and/or lookup table, wherein said rule engine and/or lookup table are used to determine the likelihood of an operation and/or an amount of work that needs to be carried out in respect of a vehicle part based on one or more the determined classifications.
“13. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the outputting the determined classifications further comprises determining one or more damage representations from the one or more determined classifications, wherein the one or more damage representations are for one or more of the normalized parts of the vehicle.
“14. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising determining any or any combination of a normalized point of impact and/or an object of collision; and determining if the classification of the at least some damage to the vehicle is consistent with the normalized point of impact and/or the object of collision.
“15. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the classification of the at least some damage to the vehicle is a generalizable damage representation for the vehicle.
“16. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising determining any anomalies in the vehicle input data.
“17. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising using machine learned models that are trained without make, model or year data.
“18. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising outputting one or more confidence scores.
“19. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising outputting one or more of any or any combination of: damage severity measures; damage locations; damage types; and damage descriptors.”
For the URL and additional information on this patent, see: Aktas, Rusen. Universal car damage determination with make/model invariance.
(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)
Investigators from University of Washington Target Managed Care (Effects of Adult Medicaid Dental Benefits Elimination On Child Dental Care Use): Managed Care
Health insurance provider directories often have errors; what to do, a health consumer guide
Advisor News
Annuity News
Health/Employee Benefits News
Life Insurance News