At Emerline, we deeply understand and strongly support the desire of our clients to get innovative solutions that would allow them to get a sharper competitive edge on the market, ensure business modernity, improve customers' engagement as well as increase their trust and loyalty. At the same time, we also believe that a mindless strive for innovations never (or at least very rarely) leads to the desired results. To ensure a comprehensive approach to the delivery of hi-tech solutions, Emerline has established an R&D department — the main hero and point of discussion for this post.
So, let’s start with defining R&D and its key values, and then learn how its approach differs from the traditional development model, what the value of R&D to business is, and when a client can consider choosing this service in an interview with Vitalij Usov, the Head of R&D Department.
What Is R&D?
The key idea standing behind the R&D (Research and Development) department is the channeling of resources towards such processes as investigation and testing. In this way, it becomes possible to develop unique products featuring some innovative techs, enhance existing ones, as well as find new, better, and faster ways of doing things. In other words, R&D teams can be characterized as pioneers in innovations who have first-hand expertise in the latest tech advances.
How R&D Works
While both research and development are included in the name, the hallmark of R&D is exactly the research that generally takes more time and effort compared to the same stage in the traditional development service model. It is so because the introduction of a brand new product to the market is quite risky without solid data that supports its relevance and applicability. And along with a phase of research that studies every detail impacting the product success, companies can ensure both the payback of investments and the ability to outperform their competitors with a unique solution, precisely targeted at their individual business needs.
To provide you with a clearer picture of what R&D is, its purpose and value, and to give you a taste of how your business can benefit from its services, we've talked to Vitalij Usov, the Head of the R&D department at Emerline.
R&D Department at Emerline: Purpose, Value, and Projects
Vitalij, for how long does the R&D department exist in our company, and what were the reasons for its creation?
It was established in the summer of 2017. The main idea behind the creation of R&D was the desire to gain greater experience with technologies such as Data Science, IoT, AR, Blockchain. Later, we also got interested in chatbots and VR.
Can you please name the main reasons why it’s important for companies to have such a department?
The R&D department is a kind of probe. It allows you to keep up with constantly evolving technologies and scan future markets that someday can produce separate directions for the world of tech.
Today, more and more clients are looking for some unique solutions, and because the R&D department is always in close touch with new technologies, we can meet the demand and provide a ready-made demo and use case for any request.
What's more, the established R&D department allows testing some new, not yet released technologies and beta versions of solutions (operating versions of mobile devices, various frameworks, etc.). So, having such a department, we warn our clients that something will not work, or vice versa, in advance, before the official release.
But what’s the difference between the traditional development department and R&D?
In the R&D department, we devote more time to consultation and analysis phases. The first, preparatory phase, can take up to a week and is made up of meetings, internal discussions, and a review of the data provided by the client. Only after this phase, we give the client an idea of how exactly we can help, taking into account all the available data and estimating perspectives for the future development of the product. If the client is satisfied with our proposal, we start more detailed development, integration, and optimization.
Can you provide some examples of solutions you develop?
Currently, we are working on several projects. The first one to mention is a document scanner.
It is a mobile application developed by our product team. The key task of the app is to recognize pages with text. You take a photo of the page, and the scanner needs to figure out if it's a text. In case it is, the app allows any necessary transformations (cropping and flipping the document) to make the page look like it was scanned. After that, the document can be saved in the pdf format.
Currently, we are working on an improved document recognition algorithm. If you are interested to learn more about the product, you can find information here.
The second product is a 3D ColorBook for iOS that offers 3D coloring by numbers with AR mode and 3D builder. It’s a fascinating game that allows coloring the reality around you.
You can learn more details about the game here.
It is worthy of mentioning that our experience with 3D and AR is not limited by this product. Once we’ve developed an environment scanner based on LiDAR technology. We used it for the creation of a 3D plan for SAP AppHaus, a creative space located in our office.
The product allows you to scan objects in the surrounding area. The resulting image files can be sent to another user or examined in an AR-mode. The important thing to note here is that we worked with the Lidar technology six months before iPhones with Lidar cameras were introduced.
The first version of the developed product processes data received from a mobile application and generates an image file of the scanned object on the server. Currently, we are working on improvements to the scan quality. There are also plans to transfer data processing to a mobile device.
If you want to learn more about the ways our R&D specialists can help you with the delivery of innovative solutions, whether AR, IoT, AI, chatbots, blockchain, etc., you are always welcome to contact us for a free consultation. And thank you for reading.
