US 12,316,803 B2
Automated system for detecting phone distraction events and method thereof
Riccardo Tisseur, Aramengo (IT); and Matteo Maffetti, Trento (IT)
Assigned to Swiss Reinsurance Company Ltd., Zurich (CH)
Filed by Swiss Reinsurance Company Ltd., Zurich (CH)
Filed on Jun. 21, 2022, as Appl. No. 17/807,950.
Application 17/807,950 is a continuation of application No. PCT/EP2021/074336, filed on Sep. 3, 2021.
Claims priority of application No. 328/21 (CH), filed on Mar. 29, 2021.
Prior Publication US 2022/0337698 A1, Oct. 20, 2022
Int. Cl. H04M 1/72454 (2021.01); B60W 40/08 (2012.01)
CPC H04M 1/72454 (2021.01) [B60W 40/08 (2013.01); B60W 2540/229 (2020.02)] 11 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A system for detecting phone distraction events in a moving vehicle, the system comprising:
a smartphone of a driver of the moving vehicle; and
an Internet of Things (IoT) server communicatively coupled to the smartphone, wherein
the smartphone includes one or more sensors built into the smartphone,
sensor data of the one or more sensors is captured by the sensors of the smartphone during a vehicle trip and is transmitted to the IoT server,
the sensor data includes one or more chunks of data streams associated with an IoT service from the smartphone,
the IoT server is configured to:
analyze the sensor data to identify one or more phone handling events associated with the smartphone during the vehicle trip, wherein
each of the one or more phone handling events is categorized into one of an opening event and a closing event,
the opening event includes at least one of a device unlock event associated with the smartphone and a device movement event associated with the smartphone, and
the closing event includes at least one of a device lock event associated with the smartphone, a device orientation change event associated with the smartphone, and a vehicle trip end event,
aggregate the one or more phone handling events associated with the smartphone into one or more macro events;
process the aggregated one or more macro events based on a set of preconfigured rules to determine a phone distraction event, the set of preconfigured rules being based on predefined thresholds to determine the phone distraction event, and
compute the device movement event associated with the smartphone based on the sensor data received from an accelerometer sensor, including:
calculating an acceleration norm signal based on the sensor data,
filtering the acceleration norm signal based on a predefined threshold to detect a plurality of device movement candidates, each of the plurality of device movement candidates being characterized by a start time and an end time,
merging two or more device movement candidates from amongst the plurality of device movement candidates to generate a merged device movement candidate when a time difference between a start time of a subsequent device movement candidate of the two or more device movement candidates and an end time of a current device movement candidate is less than a predetermined device movement threshold,
symmetrically enlarging the merged device movement candidate to generate an enlarged merged device movement candidate,
computing a dispersion index and a quantile for the enlarged merged device movement candidate, and
determining the device movement event associated with the smartphone based on the dispersion index and the quantile.