Microelectromechanical accelerometer based sensor system

• US 9,655,547 B1
• Filed: 12/16/2015
• Issued: 05/23/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 12/16/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hartford Fire Insurance Company (The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Hartford Fire Insurance Company (The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc.)
• Inventors: Carroll, William Joseph, Molinsky, Bradley Dean, Dunst, Michael J., Tipton, Thomas Andrew, Battaglini, Joseph S.
• Primary Examiner(s): NGUYEN, LEON VIET Q
• Application Number:
  US14/970,744
• Time in Patent Office: 524 Days
• Field of Search: None
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 2560/0475 Special features of memory means, e.g. removable memory cards
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 2562/0219 Inertial sensors, e.g. accelerometers, gyroscopes, tilt switches
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 2562/028 Microscale sensors, e.g. electromechanical sensors [MEMS]
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/0022 Monitoring a patient using a global network, e.g. telephone networks, internet
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/0024 for multiple sensor units attached to the patient, e.g. using a body or personal area network
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/1118 Determining activity level
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/1123 Discriminating type of movement, e.g. walking or running A61B5/1116, A61B5/112 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/681 Wristwatch-type devices
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7246 using correlation, e.g. template matching or determination of similarity
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7264 Classification of physiological signals or data, e.g. using neural networks, statistical classifiers, expert systems or fuzzy systems neural networks per se G06N3/00; expert systems per se G06N5/00
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7282 Event detection, e.g. detecting unique waveforms indicative of a medical condition A61B5/4094, A61B5/4818, A61B5/349, A61B5/0823 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: B81B 7/007 Interconnections between the MEMS and external electrical signals
• CPC Class Codes: B81B 7/0087 On-device systems and sensors for controlling, regulating or monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/08 Insurance
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 10/60 for patient-specific data, e.g. for electronic patient records
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/67 for remote operation

Abstract

This invention relates to apparatus and systems for providing home and building security and condition monitoring. More particularly, the invention relates to a plurality of devices, including intelligent, multi-sensing, network-connected devices, that communicate dynamically with each other and a remote server.

Claims

1. A micro-electro-mechanical-system (MEMS) based sensor system for detecting and analyzing activity levels comprising:

a wireless router having a transceiver operable to communicate with at least one server programmed to operate as a world wide web server and having a network data adapter to communicate with one or more third party networks; and

a wearable microelectromechanical sensor configured to connect to a mobile electronic device, the microelectromechanical sensor including a wireless communication transceiver provided internal to the microelectromechanical sensor wherein the microelectromechanical sensor wirelessly communicates with the mobile electronic device;

the mobile electronic device configured to wirelessly receive and display user activity data collected by the microelectromechanical sensor, the mobile electronic device having a transceiver for transmitting the received user activity data to a remote server system device via the wireless router, the remote server system device configured to analyze the user activity data to determine an associated activity classification associated with the user activity data, each activity classification corresponding to a predetermined condition and an associated condition benefit, wherein the remote server system device is to automatically generate an exception condition for an investigator upon detection of a potential fraudulent condition based on a comparison of the sensed user activity data with a historical profile that particular user'"'"'s past activities and a predictive model, the mobile electronic device enabled to transmit instructions to microelectromechanical sensor in order to vary a sampling condition of the microelectromechanical sensor in response to the determined activity classification.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the micromechanical sensors includes a nonvolatile memory having stored representations of instructions to electronically correlate the user activity data with a reference scale of activity levels.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the mobile electronic device includes an accelerometer and a memory having stored instructions, and a processor circuit.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the microelectromechanical sensors comprises at least a plurality of accelerometers capturing representations of actual user activity that are indicative of a potential fraudulent condition related to at least one of a short term disability or a long term disability.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the microelectromechanical sensor generates an output signal indicative of an activity level that corresponds to a certain user condition.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein location data is used to infer an activity level.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the server outputs an electronic communication to the user in the event the user condition does not correspond to the detected activity level.

8. The system of claim 1, where the mobile device electronically correlates the user activity levels with a predetermined classification of allowable activity levels, the user being provided a differential discount.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the mobile device includes a processor circuit and a volatile memory and the processor circuit is operable to store into the volatile memory a time-window of data responsive to activity of the user, wherein the activity may qualify the user for a benefit.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the benefit is a pricing adjustment.

11. The system of claim 1, wherein the microelectromechanical sensor includes a processor and a memory, wherein and the processor is configured to generate an activity classification of the user activity.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein the activity classification qualifies the user for a pricing adjustment.

17. The system of claim 1, wherein the predictive model is associated with at least one of:

(i) a neural network, (ii) a Bayesian network, (iii) a hidden Markov model, (iv) an expert system, (v) a decision tree, (vi) a collection of decision trees, and (vii) a support vector machine.

13. A microelectromechanical sensor based system for measuring activity levels comprising:

at least one wearable microelectromechanical sensor configured within a mobile electronic device, the microelectromechanical sensor including a wireless communication transceiver provided internal to the microelectromechanical sensor for transmitting the measured user activity data to a remote server system device via a communications network, the remote server system configured to analyze the user activity data to determine an associated activity classification associated with the user activity data, each activity classification corresponding to a predetermined condition and an associated condition benefit, wherein the remote server system device is to automatically generate an exception condition for an investigator upon detection of a potential fraudulent condition based on a comparison of the sensed user activity data with a historical profile of that particular user'"'"'s past activities and a predictive model, wherein the determined activity classification determines a content of one or more electronic communications transmitted by the remote server system to a user device.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the electronic communication is configured for display on the mobile electronic device.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the determined activity classification is based on historical analysis of activity levels associated with a variety of conditions.

16. The system of claim 13 wherein the conditions relate to a sedentary or an active condition that are correlated with a compliant and a non compliant classification.