Patent Issued for Virtual home inspection (USPTO 11526946): Esurance Insurance Services Inc.

2023 JAN 04 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- A patent by the inventors Lekas, Stephen Nicholas (San Francisco, CA, US), filed on June 6, 2019, was published online on December 13, 2022, according to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx correspondents.

Patent number 11526946 is assigned to Esurance Insurance Services Inc. (San Francisco, California, United States).

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

“Field

“The present disclosure generally relates to insurance services, and more particularly to property inspection for property insurance.

“Description of the Related Art

“The homeowners insurance industry uses certified property inspectors to provide property inspection data. The property inspection data provides risk characteristic information to an insurance carrier to be used by the insurance carrier in rating and underwriting a property’s insurance policy. The cost of having the certified property inspector sent to the property is often passed along to the consumer purchasing the insurance policy.”

In addition to the background information obtained for this patent, NewsRx journalists also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “In certain embodiments, a method is provided for facilitating virtual inspection of an insurable area. The method includes the steps of receiving an indication of a request from a user at a user mobile device to perform a virtual inspection of an insurable area, determining one or more information items needed with respect to the insurable area, providing a set of instructions to the user at the mobile device for capturing one or more image items based on the determined one or more information items, receiving a set of image items from the mobile device in response to the instructions and providing an insurance decision for the insurable area based on the received set of image items.

“In certain embodiments, a system for facilitating a virtual inspection of an insurable area is provided. The system includes a client application installed at a user mobile device and a server for hosting the client application. In certain embodiments, the server includes one or more processors and a machine-readable medium including instructions stored therein, which when executed by the processors, cause the processors to perform operations. The operations include receiving a request from the mobile device to perform a virtual inspection of an insurable area, determining one or more information items needed with respect to the insurable area, providing a set of instructions to the user at the mobile device for capturing one or more image items based on the determined one or more information items, receiving a set of image items from the mobile device in response to the instructions, analyzing the set of image items and extracting at least one of the one or more information items from the set of image items.

“In certain embodiments, a non-transitory computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions stored thereon for execution by a processor to perform a method for facilitating a virtual inspection of an insurable area is provided. The method may include the steps of receiving an indication of a request from a user at a user mobile device to perform a virtual inspection of an insurable area, determining one or more information items needed with respect to the insurable area, providing a set of instructions to the user at the mobile device for capturing one or more image items based on the determined one or more information items, the instructions identifying a list of areas of the insurable area, receiving a set of image items from the mobile device in response to the instructions, the set of image items providing images from one or more of the list of areas of the insurable area and providing an insurance decision for the insurable area based on the received set of image items.

“It is understood that other configurations of the subject technology will become readily apparent from the following detailed description, where various configurations of the subject technology are shown and described by way of illustration. As will be realized, the subject technology is capable of other and different configurations and its several details are capable of modification in various other respects, all without departing from the scope of the subject technology. Accordingly, the drawings and detailed description are to be regarded as illustrative in nature and not as restrictive.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A method for a virtual inspection, comprising: determining, by a computer server, information to be used for performing an inspection of an insurable area of property; providing, at the computer server and via a communication network, instructions to a mobile device to capture one or more images based on the determined information; receiving, via the communication network, the one or more images from the mobile device in response to the instructions; analyzing, by the computer server, the one or more images to determine a location of the mobile device when the one or more images were captured based on geotag information associated with the one or more images; validating, by the computer server, the one or more images by comparing the location of the mobile device to a location of the insurable area of property; identifying of the information to be used for performing the inspection based on the validated one or more images; and providing an insurance rate based on the identified information.

“2. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the information comprises: accessing a set of existing information provided regarding the insurable area of property; and identifying the information needed to verify or complete the existing information.

“3. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying the information includes: analyzing the one or more images; and extracting the information from the one or more images.

“4. The method of claim 1, wherein the information includes one or more of a size or a condition regarding the insurable area of property.

“5. The method of claim 1, wherein the information includes information regarding an index of one or more belongings or personal property in the insurable area of property.

“6. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying the information includes determining that the information supplements or verifies existing information.

“7. The method of claim 1, further comprising providing the instructions to the mobile device using a live agent simulated by a computer.

“8. The method of claim 7, further comprising: receiving a request to perform the inspection; and establishing a connection to the live agent in response to receiving the request.

“9. The method of claim 1, wherein the instructions comprise a list of one or more portions of the insurable area of property for capturing the one or more images.

“10. The method of claim 9, further comprising determining the instructions by identifying the one or more portions of the insurable area of property from which image data is needed.

“11. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more images include one or more of videos or still images.

“12. The method of claim 1, further comprising detecting that the a user has accessed an application at the mobile device, wherein the information is determined in response to the detection.

“13. A non-transitory computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions stored thereon for execution by a processor to perform a method for virtual inspection, the method including: determining, by a computer server, information to be used for performing an inspection of an insurable area of property; providing, via a communication network, instructions to a mobile device to capture one or more images based on the determined information; receiving, via the communication network, the one or more images from the mobile device in response to the instructions; analyzing, by the computer server, the one or more images to determine a location of the mobile device when the one or more images were captured based on geotag information associated with the one or more images; validating, by the computer server, the one or more images by comparing the location of the mobile device to a location of the insurable area of property; identifying of the information to be used for performing the inspection based on the validated one or more images; and providing an insurance rate based on the identified information.

“14. A system, comprising: at least one data processor; and at least one memory storing instructions, which when executed by the at least one data processor, result in operations comprising: determining, by a computer server, information to be used for performing an inspection of an insurable area of property; providing, via a communication network, instructions to a mobile device to capture one or more image based on the determined information; receiving, via the communication network, the one or more images from the mobile device in response to the instructions; analyzing, by the computer server, the one or more images to determine a location of the mobile device when the one or more images were captured based on geotag information associated with the one or more images; validating, by the computer server, the one or more images by comparing the location of the mobile device to a location of the insurable area of property; identifying the information to be used for performing the inspection based on the validated one or more images; and providing an insurance rate based on the identified information.

“15. The system of claim 14, wherein the one or more images include one or more of videos or still images.”

URL and more information on this patent, see: Lekas, Stephen Nicholas. Virtual home inspection. U.S. Patent Number 11526946, filed June 6, 2019, and published online on December 13, 2022. Patent URL (for desktop use only): https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/external.html?q=(11526946)&db=USPAT&type=ids

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