Yéigo: Diné language AR app for walker and posture training in Native communities wins two MIT awards

Posted by Navajo Times | Feb 6, 2025 | Education |

By Navajo Times

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Team Yeigo won the MIT Reality Hack 2025 with its groundbreaking augmented reality-powered mobility aid, designed to help users properly adjust and use walkers to prevent injuries.

With 55 percent of walkers set at the wrong height and 47,000 mobility aid-related injuries annually, Yeigo is bridging the gap in preventative care by using Snapchat Spectacles and smartphone sensors to track posture and ensure proper fit.

Out of over 450 talented attendees, Yeigo was awarded the MIT Reality Hack Gold Prize (1st place) and the MIT Reality Hack Founder’s Lab Grand Prize.

Yeigo, is the Diné word for “keep going,” Yeigo team member Akilah Martinez’s language. The project also addresses broader health care inequities, particularly for Native communities. Martinez, who took care of her másání in hospice, immediately saw the Yeigo mobility aid as a tool that could have benefitted her grandmother.

Courtesy | Sean Chee
Members of the Yeigo team look up during the MIT Reality Hack 2025.

Yeigo was inspired by the team’s family members who struggled to find properly fitted mobility aids. The tool uses AR technology to measure the correct fit when transitioning to mobility aids like walkers or canes. The tool helps set one’s walker height and detect common risks – like bending too far forward – while guiding users to safer movement patterns.

Winning MIT Reality Hack, the premier global competition for AR/VR innovation, solidifies Yeigo’s potential in the growing market for preventative health and posture technology, especially with the inclusion of Native communities.

The 2025 Reality Hack at MIT further highlights Native American voices in XR by bringing Martinez back for the second year in a row to present a workshop at the monumental hackathon. Martinez, aka “Glittering World Girl,” was joined by Paige Dansinger, the founder of Better World Museum, and Krystal Curley, the founding executive director of Indigenous Lifeways, to discuss “Using your cosmic voice of activation: Socially responsible storytelling” and “XR for interdimensional rebirth” during the MIT conference on day one of the hackathon.

As a creative technologist, Martinez reimagines the development of circular Native economies in the XR industry, creating ownership of storytelling to empower the community, coupled with how Native communities can use XR to revitalize language and culture.

“Yeigo’s project marks a major shift in how Extended Reality can serve the public,” said Patrick Burton, the Benvision CEO and Yeigo team member. “They took the Snapchat Spectacles, a product marketed toward younger generations for games and entertainment, and found a way to use it to solve problems for demographics who may never have been interested in or even heard of a product like that.

“It was an honor to have mentored this trailblazing team and provided them insights from my own journey leveraging the same technology to help blind people navigate, and I am happy to see their innovation rightfully recognized by the MIT Reality Hack judges.”

Founders Lab Advisor Karen W. Lam said, “Team Yeigo embodied the true spirit of innovation—turning a deeply personal insight into a scalable solution. What started as a mission to ensure proper mobility aid fittings evolved into a technology with the potential to benefit a much larger market, from individuals with mobility challenges to those struggling with poor posture.

“Their commitment to accessibility, inclusivity, and addressing the needs of underserved communities exemplifies how human-centered technology drives real progress.”

Martinez added, “As a creative technologist working in the Indigenous language and culture field, I am extremely excited (about) how XR technology can help Indigenous communities leapfrog into a more equitable world that is inclusive of our storytelling, epistemology, and communities.

“By winning two grand prizes at the 2025 MIT Reality Hack while implementing Diné Bizaad into Yeigo through the use of Snap Spectacles, we see how the XR community aims to use XR for social good.”