Ash Maddi

Hello! I am Ash : )

Welcome to my mini portfolio with select pieces of my non-NDA work. I'm diving deep into Human-Computer Interaction at Iowa State University, where I'm pursuing a concurrent Master's/Ph.D. program. I am a Research Assistant at the university's VRAC lab (Visualize. Reason. Analyze. Collaborate).

The "HRC - Disassembly VR Training" project aims to create a VR training simulation for the disassembly of e-waste and evaluate the path planning model of the robot along with synthetic data generation. It employs eye, hand, and body tracking, real-time ROS-Unity integration, and path-planning model evaluation. Key benefits are improved safety, cost and time efficiency, scalability, and an engaging learning experience.

Responsibilities- VR Development

Built this fun experiment at Meta’s HQ during the Presence platform Hack ’23. We wanted to aim for the moonshot while having fun. But we ran into some interesting challenges. Since you’re moving on a skateboard wearing Quest Pro, there was no normal way to interact with our #app, so we had to get creative.

We used the headset’s superior face-tracking capabilities to interact with our app.

Responsibilities - Design and development

It can be challenging to find time to rest and rejuvenate in our busy day-to-day lives. As children, we had idle time to explore and observe the world. "Magic of Everyday" is a #VR experience that we've created for you to explore the importance of presence and observing the magic around you and within yourself. Our experience is audience-driven and invites you to step into the #darkness and discover your #light. We intend to help users understand their #mental responses from the experience so #therapies can be developed to help with a person's well-being. The goal of this experience is to measure the user’s brain activity and change the VR environment dynamically. We used a prototype version of the EEG band called Arctop.

Read more at: Magic of Everyday | Devpost

Responsibilities -  Design and Development

A non-fiction VR learning experience inspired by the work of Diane Nash, an American civil rights activist. The experience was designed and built over a weekend for the XRBrainJam2022 with my inspiring teammates from Harvard and Columbia. We were one of the winners and got to showcase it at the New York Times Office. We plan to expand this further based on our design plan. (2022)

Responsibilities - Design and Development

This application lets you customize various accessories of a car, like a Spoiler and a floor mat, and then visualize them on a life-size Holographic Car before making the final decision. Works with both gestures and speech commands. (Based on inputs from Microsoft's MR team)

The app also has the spatial understanding capability that scans your room and tailors the experience accordingly. (2018)

Responsibilities - Interactions and spatial understanding 

Yet another experiment for Indoor navigation. But this approach used a 3D scan of the space (iPhone's LiDAR) instead of point clouds which made the content more anchored, thereby eliminating/reducing the need for point cloud localization. (2021)

Responsibilities - Design and Development

This app lets you explore various parts of an engine in both working conditions and an exploded view, thereby giving the person a complete understanding of its inner workings, which wouldn't have been possible otherwise. Supports both gestures and voice commands. (2019)

Responsibilities - Interactions

A fun class project inspired by Star Wars exploring the capabilities of Manomotion hand-tracking SDK 

Responsibilities - Design and Development

VR for everyone is the motto behind this prototype. This web-based VR shopping experience can run on any device that supports a browser with WebGL capabilities. Due to the limiting factor of the device and the browser, 360° panorama images were used in most areas. (2019)

Responsibilities - A-frame Developer

In my previous job as a Research Engineer, I had the honor of building and presenting tech prototypes 💼 to global CXO leaders from major brands. Some of them are Walmart, Loblaws, Macy’s, Nike, PetSmart, Hoka, MARS, BlastIQ, Kohl’s, Lululemon, YoungLiving, London Heathrow, IHG, and many others.

This experience profoundly shaped my approach to technology: keeping it simple, adaptive, and always value-driven 💎.

Since it's a mini-portfolio, only some of my non-NDA prototypes are listed here. If you are interested in what I am working on or want to collaborate with me to solve a problem you have identified, message me on LinkedIn or email me at

📧 : hi@euphoricreality.space

Let’s keep learning and stay inspired! 🚀✨