“Creative flexibility”, said Pavan Sudheendra when asked what he loved most about working in Samsung R&D Institute India – Bangalore (SRI-B). Now a Director in the Visual Intelligence Team, Pavan started his journey at SRI-B over 18 years ago. It was his third company in the fourth year of his career – an opportunity he grabbed in the simple hope of gaining experience in a product-based company. However, the drive for innovation, openness to ideas, and encouragement to seize opportunities kept him hooked to this R&D center. Before he knew it, he had become a veteran at SRI-B.

Pavan entered the Samsung universe in 2007, during a time when mobile handsets dominated the market. He was working on the media player solution for Samsung phones, which required playback of videos even at a resolution of 176x144 pixels. The following year, with the introduction of smart phones, a new opportunity came knocking on his door – a chance to develop an entirely new smartphone platform, “Samsung bada”, from which users could download apps for their various needs – the Android OS was not yet launched at the time. This new project kept him busy for the next couple of years until Samsung introduced the Galaxy S series in 2010, forever changing the course of his work."

Pavan’s first venture into the Android terrain was when he worked with the global team to develop one of Samsung’s first major features for Android called “Collage”, which was released with the Galaxy S4 series.

Following this achievement, hewas involved in the development of the 'Selective Focus'—a key feature of the Galaxy S5 device and the first of its kind in smartphones. It allowed users to focus on a singular subject while blurring the rest of the frame.

Our goal was to bring DSLR-like features to mobile phones. However, DSLR emulation is complex, involving accurate subject separation and a shallow depth-of-field effect with bokeh blooms.
In 2017, wetook a conscious call to build an AI solution for this—an industry-first initiative. In the process, we developed many core AI patents related to image segmentation, matting, and depth estimation.

Several years and updates later, this is now among the Galaxy series’ most appreciated camera features known as ‘Portrait Mode’, Samsung’s first AI-based solution for Camera.

When the Galaxy S21 series launched, we expected positive reviews about Portrait Mode. But then, a well-known tech reviewer tweeted that Samsung had the best Portrait Mode, and this was retweeted by Sundar Pichai. That was a very special moment for us. When we formed the team, our dream was to develop the best solution in the world. We had built it over years, developed many core IPs and worked relentlessly to make it happen, and with the Galaxy S21, we did it. We had even topped the global benchmark on matting… The feeling was indescribable”, he shared.

With this success came a new challenge: introducing flagship S series features to Samsung's mid-tier devices. This required building lighter and scalable versions to meet computational requirements." Working with his team, Pavan made this possible so that more consumers could enjoy Samsung’s flagship features, resulting in the introduction of features like Night Portrait and 2X Portrait in the Galaxy M and A series.

“One thing I love about SRI-B is the sense of innovation we have here. There is a constant encouragement for innovation, and absolute freedom to explore new ideas and work on something we are passionate about. I have been involved in filing 20+ patents and 5 IEEE publications. In addition, since we work on state-of-the-art technology, you are always challenged to go beyond what you know, and this also opens up new opportunities. So the growth never stops, and you never get bored”, he shared.

Through SRI-B’s higher education sponsorship program, he was also able to graduate with an M.Tech degree from IIIT-Bangalore, an upskilling - especially in AI – which he believes he would have missed if not for SRI-B’s focus on continuous learning and development.

Pavan currently heads the Visual AI solutions department in SRI-B, which focusses on developing AI solutions in Camera. He values the end-to-end ownership that SRI-B center holds in developing solution, from conceptualization to its materialization in products. “Sometimes, even within a year, you see your idea in consumers' hands. That type of scalability is not found everywhere”.

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