SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING AUTOMOTIVE PURCHASE, INSURANCE QUOTE, AND VEHICLE FINANCING INFORMATION USING VEHICLE RECOGNITION

• US 20130329943A1
• Filed: 06/12/2012
• Published: 12/12/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 06/12/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company (State Farm)
• Original Assignee: State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company (State Farm)
• Inventors: Christopulos, Nick U., Tofte, Nathan Lee, Anderson, Matthew R.
• Granted Patent: US 8,774,465 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 382/103
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 20/20 in augmented reality scenes
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 2201/08 Detecting or categorising vehicles

Abstract

A system for providing vehicle information at an automobile point of purchase includes a user device having a camera or other image capturing device that is used to capture an image of an automobile. An application on or associated with the image capturing device can either transmit the image to a service provider for processing, or can implement one or more steps in a feature recognition process locally, and thereafter transmit the data to a service provider. In either case, the service provider can then complete the feature recognition processing and identify the automobile from the image. The service provider can then communicate with a make and model database to provide useful information on the vehicle, which can then be transmitted to the user device and conveniently displayed.

Claims

1. A method for use in a network comprising:

with at least one computing device;

receiving an image of at least a portion of a vehicle from a prospective purchaser, wherein the image is of an exterior portion of a vehicle other than a portion displaying a Vehicle Identification Number;

identifying from the image a region of interest around a license plate of the vehicle;

identifying the vehicle using at least one object recognition technique, the at least one object recognition technique including comparing features extracted from the image with data associated with an image database of vehicle images, wherein features extracted from the image comprise features associated with the region of interest around the license plate of the vehicle other than a Vehicle Identification Number; and

delivering vehicle-related information to the prospective purchaser responsive to identifying the vehicle from the image.

2. A method in accordance with claim 1, wherein the vehicle-related information comprises vehicle-specific information.

3. A method in accordance with claim 1, wherein the vehicle-related information comprises insurance information.

4. A method in accordance with claim 1, wherein the vehicle-related information comprises financing information.

5. A method in accordance with claim 1, wherein the vehicle-related information comprises comparative information associated with a purchase of the vehicle.

6. A method in accordance with claim 1, wherein the vehicle-related information comprises historical information about the vehicle.

7. A method in accordance with claim 1, wherein the vehicle is identified from the image using a global feature based object recognition approach.

8. A method in accordance with claim 1, wherein the vehicle is identified from the image using a local feature based object recognition approach.

26. A method in accordance with claim 1, wherein identifying from the image a region of interest around a license plate of the vehicle comprises using edge detection to detect a license plate region.

9. A system for providing information to a purchaser of a vehicle, comprising:

an image capturing device associated with a prospective vehicle purchaser;

at least one processing device in communication with the image capturing device configured to receive an image of at least a portion of a vehicle from the image capturing device, wherein the image is of an exterior portion of a vehicle other than a portion displaying a Vehicle Identification Number, the at least one processing device further configured to identify from the image a region of interest around a license plate of the vehicle and identify the vehicle using at least one object recognition technique, the at least one object recognition technique including comparing features extracted from the image received from the image capturing device with data associated with an image database of vehicle images, wherein features extracted from the image comprise features associated with the region of interest around the license plate of the vehicle other than a Vehicle Identification Number; and

at least one database in communication with the at least one processing device, wherein the processing device is configured to access information from the database corresponding to a vehicle identified from the image and deliver the information to the prospective vehicle purchaser.

10. A system in accordance with claim 9, wherein the at least one processing device is configured to identify the vehicle using a scale invariant feature transform based method.

11. A system in accordance with claim 9, wherein the at least one processing device is configured to identify the vehicle using a speeded-up robust features based method.

12. A system in accordance with claim 9, wherein vehicle identification comprises an identification of an individual vehicle, and the information comprises a history of the individual vehicle.

13. A system in accordance with claim 9, wherein a vehicle identification comprises an identification of a make and model of a vehicle, and the information comprises information associated with a vehicle of the same make and model.

14. A system in accordance with claim 9, wherein the information comprises insurance-related information.

15. A system in accordance with claim 9, wherein the information comprises financing-related information.

27. A system in accordance with claim 9, wherein the processing device is configured to identify from the image a region of interest around a license plate of the vehicle using edge detection to detect a license plate region.

16. A method for use with non-transitory computer readable media operable on one or more processors, the method comprising:

receiving an image of at least a portion of a vehicle from an image capturing device associated with a prospective vehicle purchaser, wherein the image is of an exterior portion of a vehicle other than a portion displaying a Vehicle Identification Number;

identifying from the image a region of interest around a license plate of the vehicle;

identifying the vehicle from features extracted from the image received from the image capturing device, the identifying including using at least one object recognition technique for comparing the features with data from an image database of vehicle images, wherein features extracted from the image comprise features associated with the region of interest around the license plate of the vehicle other than a Vehicle Identification Number; and

providing information to the prospective vehicle purchaser from a database corresponding to a vehicle identified from the image.

17. A method in accordance with claim 16, wherein the identifying comprises identifying the vehicle using a scale invariant feature transform based method.

18. A method in accordance with claim 16, wherein the identifying comprises identifying the vehicle using a speeded-up robust features based method.

19. A method in accordance with claim 16, wherein identifying the vehicle comprises identifying an individual vehicle, and the information comprises a history of the individual vehicle.

20. A method in accordance with claim 16, wherein identifying the vehicle comprises identifying a make and model of a vehicle, and the information comprises information associated with a vehicle of the same make and model.

28. A method in accordance with claim 16, wherein identifying from the image a region of interest around a license plate of the vehicle comprises using edge detection to detect a license plate region.

21. A method of vehicle identification and provision of vehicle information, the method comprising:

receiving an image of at least a portion of a vehicle from an image capturing device, wherein the image is of an exterior portion of a vehicle other than a portion displaying a Vehicle Identification Number;

providing a database of vehicle images and a vehicle information database;

using at least one object recognition technique, the at least one object recognition technique including comparing objects/features of the vehicle imaged by the image capturing device with objects/features of vehicles of the database of vehicle images via an object/feature method other than character recognition;

identifying from the image a region of interest around a license plate of the vehicle;

identifying the vehicle imaged by the image capturing device based on the comparing of objects/features; and

providing information from the vehicle information database corresponding to the identified vehicle imaged by the image capturing device;

wherein the objects/features comprise objects/features from the region of interest.

22. A method in accordance with claim 21, wherein the comparing via an object/feature based method comprises a global feature based object recognition method.

23. A method in accordance with claim 21, wherein the comparing via an object/feature based method comprises a local feature based object recognition method.

24. A method in accordance with claim 21, wherein the comparing via an object/feature based method comprises a scale invariant feature transform based method.

25. A method in accordance with claim 21, wherein the comparing via an object/feature based method comprises a speeded-up robust features based method.

29. A method in accordance with claim 21, wherein identifying from the image a region of interest around a license plate of the vehicle comprises using edge detection to detect a license plate region.