Building prototype and releasing to our client for early access is a fundamental component in A&W engineering service.  Rapid prototyping can be realized in system engineering, algorithm development and user application.  With these early access, clients can test out the device, algorithm or application in alternative settings even with real world usage scenarios.  This allows client to do early evaluation on the system performance, industrial design, algorithm effectiveness and user experience.  

With the popularity of Raspberry PI, Arduino, and other platforms pushed by major semiconductor manufactures, there is a suite of the off-the-shelves prototype systems on the market.  These systems, along with a rich library of supporting peripherals (like displays, WiFi modules, camera, etc), allow us to build quick system prototypes for a variety of applications.  With a 3D printer, even the custom mechanical component can be built to further enhance the realism of the prototype.  Client can take the system prototype into the field to collect data samples, and with the algorithm prototype, some preliminary processing can be performed.

As the algorithm been implemented, many different models of the algorithms will be developed.  Internally, these models are used for implementation and verification purpose.   However, these models can also be packaged and released to the clients.  The model comes with sample data generator and various visualization tools for quick data analysis.  The models can have different implementation levels of granularity, from an idealized floating point model all the way down to a bit exact model that can be executed on a tiny piece of programmable hardware.   Clients can run these models on the generated data for validation purpose, or on the collected data from the field for real world testing.

A big component for the clinical software application is the user experience.  In this case, an early wire frame based user interface model is a vital component to understand the user experience and to achieve a smooth work flow in the final product.  We can build wire frame user experience models that can run on either computers, tablets or smart phones (both iOS and Android)  These models can be packaged and released to the clients for quick review of the user experience with the internal or external clinicians.