July 7, 2016 - 3:31 PM EDT
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"Analyzing a Collision with a Vehicle Having Unknown Damage" in Patent Application Approval Process (USPTO 20160178465)

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Computer Weekly News -- A patent application by the inventors Smith, Darrin A. (San Antonio, TX); Henn, Kenna (Austin, TX), filed on December 23, 2014, was made available online on June 30, 2016, according to news reporting originating from Washington, D.C., by VerticalNews correspondents.

This patent application has not been assigned to a company or institution.

The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background information supplied by the inventors: "Vehicular accidents are a common occurrence in many parts of the world and, unfortunately, vehicular accidents, even at low impact and separation velocities, are often accompanied by injury to vehicle occupants. It is often desirable to reconcile actual occupant injury reports to a potential for energy based on vehicular accident information. Trained engineers and accident reconstruction experts evaluate subject vehicles involved in a collision, and based on their training and experience, may be able to arrive at an estimated change in velocity for each the subject vehicles. The potential for injury can be derived from knowledge of the respective change in velocity for the subject vehicles.

"However, involving trained engineers and accident reconstruction experts in all collisions, especially in the numerous low velocity collisions, is often not cost effective. Other techniques also have concerns. For example, energy-based methods commonly employed to assess collision severity require an estimate of the deformation to both vehicles involved in the collision. For some insurance carriers, it is not part of their standard claims process to collect post-accident photographs for a third party vehicle. For these carriers, the information about the physical damage to the third party vehicle may be limited to what can be inferred from a police report or a repair estimate, which can prevent use of certain techniques."

In addition to the background information obtained for this patent application, VerticalNews journalists also obtained the inventors' summary information for this patent application: "In one aspect, a method comprises: receiving, in an impact severity determination logic of a computer system, first information for a first vehicle involved in a collision and second information for a second vehicle involved in the collision, where crush depth information is not available for the second vehicle; initializing, in the impact severity determination logic, a Monte Carlo simulation; calculating, in the impact severity determination logic, for each of a plurality of iterations of the Monte Carlo simulation, a collision force on the first vehicle based at least in part on the first information; calculating, in the impact severity determination logic, for each of the plurality of iterations of the Monte Carlo simulation, a crush depth for the second vehicle based at least in part on the calculated collision force on the first vehicle and the second information; calculating, in the impact severity determination logic, for each of the plurality of iterations of the Monte Carlo simulation, first total energy absorbed by the first vehicle based on the first information including first crush depth information for the first vehicle, and calculating second total energy absorbed by the second vehicle based on the calculated crush depth and the second information; calculating, in the impact severity determination logic, for each of the plurality of iterations of the Monte Carlo simulation, a first impact severity for the first vehicle using the first total energy, and calculating a second impact severity for the second vehicle using the second total energy; and reporting a range of the first impact severity for the first vehicle and a range of the second impact severity for the second vehicle based on the Monte Carlo simulation, via an output device of the computer system.

"In another aspect, a system comprises: an input processing logic to receive first information regarding a first vehicle involved in a collision and to receive second information regarding a second vehicle involved in the collision, the second information not including crush depth information for the second vehicle; a Monte Carlo simulation module, a report generation logic to generate a report including the first estimated impact severity for the first vehicle and the second estimated impact severity for the second vehicle, for each of a plurality of iterations of a Monte Carlo simulation; and a report output logic coupled to the report generation logic to output the report to an end user.

"In an example, the Monte Carlo simulation module has one or more constituent logics, including a collision force determination logic to calculate a collision force on the first vehicle based at least in part on the first information; a crush depth calculation logic to calculate a crush depth for the second vehicle based at least in part on the calculated collision force on the first vehicle and the second information; an energy absorption calculation logic to calculate first total energy absorbed by the first vehicle based on the first information (including first crush depth information for the first vehicle), and to calculate second total energy absorbed by the second vehicle based on the calculated crush depth and the second information; and an impact severity calculation logic to calculate a first estimated impact severity for the first vehicle using the first total energy and a second estimated impact severity for the second vehicle using the second total energy.

"In yet another aspect, a non-transitory computer readable medium comprises instructions that when executed enable a computer system to perform a method comprising: receiving first information for a first vehicle involved in a collision and second information for a second vehicle involved in the collision, where crush depth information is not available for the second vehicle; initializing a Monte Carlo simulation; calculating, for each of a plurality of iterations of the Monte Carlo simulation, a collision force on the first vehicle based at least in part on the first information; calculating, for each of the plurality of iterations of the Monte Carlo simulation, a crush depth for the second vehicle based at least in part on the calculated collision force on the first vehicle and the second information; calculating, for each of the plurality of iterations of the Monte Carlo simulation, first total energy absorbed by the first vehicle based on the first information including first crush information for the first vehicle, and calculating second total energy absorbed by the second vehicle based on the calculated crush depth and the second information; calculating, for each of the plurality of iterations of the Monte Carlo simulation, a first impact severity for the first vehicle using the first total energy, and calculating a second impact severity for the second vehicle using the second total energy; and reporting a range of the first impact severity for the first vehicle and a range of the second impact severity for the second vehicle based on the Monte Carlo simulation, via an output device of the computer system.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

"FIG. 1 is an illustration of a vehicle involved in a collision.

"FIG. 2 is an illustration of crush profile zones in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.

"FIG. 3 is a flow diagram of a method for determining an impact severity for a vehicle involved in an accident, in accordance with an embodiment.

"FIG. 4 is an illustration of example damage width of a vehicle in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.

"FIG. 5 is a flow diagram of a method for determining impact severity in accordance with another embodiment of the present invention.

"FIG. 6 is an illustration of an accident configuration for a representative collision.

"FIG. 7 is an illustration of an entry of damage information for vehicles involved in a representative collision.

"FIG. 8 is a block diagram of an impact severity determination logic in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention

"FIG. 9 is a block diagram of a system in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention."

URL and more information on this patent application, see: Smith, Darrin A.; Henn, Kenna. Analyzing a Collision with a Vehicle Having Unknown Damage. Filed December 23, 2014 and posted June 30, 2016. Patent URL: http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.html&r=4979&p=100&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=20160623.PD.&OS=PD/20160623&RS=PD/20160623

Keywords for this news article include: Patents, Computers.

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Source: Equities.com News (July 7, 2016 - 3:31 PM EDT)

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