Reward system for autonomous rideshare vehicles

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11657422-B2
Application number	US-202117319491-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	May 13, 2021
Priority date	May 13, 2021
Publication date	May 23, 2023
Grant date	May 23, 2023

Abstract

A fleet management system implements a rewards-based feedback system to receive feedback from users of a rideshare service that provides rides using autonomous vehicles (AVs). The fleet management system maintains user accounts associated with each user and provides reward points to each user account. When the user is riding in an AV, the user can access a user interface to select a portion of the reward points and reward them to the AV. The fleet management system may analyze the point rewards to identify individual user preferences, to identify preferences across users, or to identify AVs for maintenance or other types of modification.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method comprising:
maintaining a user account associated with a user of a ride service, the user account comprising a first number of points provided to the user;
receiving a first ride request from the user, the first ride request comprising a pickup location of the user and a destination location;
autonomously driving a first autonomous vehicle (AV) from a fleet of Avs from the pickup location to the destination location to service the first ride request;
while servicing the first ride request, generating an AV log comprising autonomous driving actions taken by the first AV, each autonomous driving action associated with a respective time at which the autonomous driving action was performed;
while servicing the first ride request, providing, to the user, an interface enabling the user to select at least a portion of the points in the user account to provide as a reward to the first AV;
receiving a reward of a second number of points from the user to the first AV via the interface, the reward received at a particular time;
deducting the second number of points from the first number of points in the user account;
correlating the reward with an autonomous driving action of the first AV based on the particular time and the AV log, the AV log indicating that the first AV performed the autonomous driving action during a time window prior to receiving the reward, the AV log comprising additional autonomous driving actions performed before the time window or after the time window;
identifying the autonomous driving action as an AV feature preference of the user;
dispatching a second AV to service a second ride request from the user; and
performing, by the second AV, the autonomous driving action correlated with the reward while servicing the second ride request.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first number of points are provided to the user at a first time, the method further comprising:
adding additional points to the user account at a second time that is a fixed time period after the first time.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising:
determining that the user has engaged the ride service for at least a threshold number of rides; and
adding additional points to the user account in response to the user engaging the ride service for at least the threshold number of rides.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising:
determining the first number of points to provide to the user based on historical ride data describing the user's usage of the ride service.

5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
requesting that the user perform a maintenance task in the first AV;
determining that the user has completed the maintenance task; and
adding additional points to the user account in response to the user performing the maintenance task.

6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
maintaining, in an AV account, a number of points rewarded to the first AV; and
in response to receiving the reward of the second number of points from the user to the first AV, adding the second number of points to the AV account.

7. The method of claim 6 , further comprising providing, in a user interface, a display to the user of the number of points in the AV account.

8. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
accessing a plurality of AV logs comprising the AV log, each of the plurality of AV logs comprising an autonomous driving action taken by an AV during a respective time window prior to the AV receiving a reward;
identifying a common action in a subset of the plurality of AV logs; and
identifying the common action as the AV feature preference, wherein the second AV performs the common action while servicing the second ride request.

9. The method of claim 1 further comprising:
adjusting a software setting of the second AV so that the second AV is programmed according to the AV feature preference.

10. A system for controlling autonomous vehicle (AV) behavior based on rider feedback comprising:
a fleet of autonomous vehicles (AVs) comprising:
a first AV to autonomously drive from a pickup location to a destination location to service a first ride request from a user, and, while servicing the first ride request, generate an AV log comprising autonomous driving actions taken by the first AV, each autonomous driving action associated with a respective time at which the autonomous driving action was performed; and
a second AV to service a second ride request from the user and, while servicing the second ride request, perform the autonomous driving action, the autonomous driving action identified as an AV preference of the user;

a user data manager to:
maintain, in a user account of the user of a ride service, a number of points provided to the user;
correlate a reward of a portion of points from the user account given by the user to the first AV with an autonomous driving behavior of the first AV based on the AV log and a particular time at which the reward was received, the AV log indicating that the first AV performed the autonomous driving action during a time window prior to receiving the reward, and the AV log comprising additional autonomous driving actions performed before the time window or after the time window; and
identify the behavior as an AV feature preference of the user;

a user interface (UI) server to:
receive the first ride request to provide a ride to the user, the first ride request comprising the pickup location and the destination location;
receive the reward of the portion of points in the user account selected by the user to provide as a reward to the first AV, the reward received at the particular time; and
receive the second ride request to provide a second ride to the user.

11. The system of claim 10 , wherein the user points data manager is further to deduct selected portion of points from the number of points in the user account.

12. The system of claim 10 , further comprising an AV points manager to:
maintain, in an AV account associated with the first AV, a number of points rewarded to the first AV; and
add the portion of points rewarded by the user to the AV account.

13. The system of claim 10 , wherein the user data manager is further to:
provide a first number of points to the user account at a first time; and
add additional points to the user account at a second time, wherein the second time is a fixed time period after the first time.

14. The system of claim 10 , wherein the user data manager is further to:
determine that the user has engaged the ride service for at least a threshold number of rides; and
adding additional points to the user account in response to the user engaging the ride service for at least the threshold number of rides.

15. The system of claim 10 , further comprising a vehicle manager to:
maintain, in an AV account, a number of points rewarded to the first AV; and
in response to receiving the reward of the portion of points in the user account selected by the user, adding the portion of points to the AV account.

16. The system of claim 15 , wherein the UI server is further to provide, in a user interface, a display to the user of the number of points in the AV account.

17. The system of claim 10 , wherein the UI server is further to receive, from the user, a reason for rewarding the first AV.

18. The system of claim 10 , the vehicle manager further to:
adjust a software setting of the second AV so that the second AV is programmed according to the AV feature preference.

19. The method of claim

Assignees

• Gm Cruise Holdings Llc

Inventors

• Vogt Kyle
• Elshenawy Mohamed Mostafa

Classifications

• G06Q30/0226

  Incentive systems for frequent usage, e.g. frequent flyer miles programs or point systems · CPC title

• G06Q30/0224 Primary

  based on user history · CPC title