Jilly Choi (12, MST) was named a top-300 scholar in the 2025 Regeneron Talent Search for his creation of a low-cost, back driveable humanoid. The Talent Search is one of the oldest and most prestigious math and science competitions for high school seniors.
According to the press release, “Each year, more than 2,000 student entrants submit original research in critically important scientific fields of study and are judged by leading experts in their fields.”
Choi has been working on his robot since his junior year. It began as a project for the science fair. He placed second in the Kentucky Science and Engineering Fair for Robotics and Intelligent Machines in 2024 and 2025. Choi also won a second award for robotics at the International Science and Engineering Fair in 2024.
He started by replicating the degrees of freedom (DOF), and then transitioned to tackling the functionality of a human. In robotics, DOF refers to the range of independent movements or axes of motion a robot can have. The more DOFs it has, the more skilled and flexible it is. A single joint that is able to rotate 360 degrees provides one DOF. A human hand has 27 DOFs.
“I created a humanoid robot that’s extremely safe and extremely low cost,” Choi said, “and that last floor is for researchers across the world to 3-D print my design of a humanoid so that anyone can do research on humanoid robotics.”
Other humanoids cost anywhere from $50,000 to $2.5 million dollars, whereas Choi’s costs around $1,500 to produce. It is currently the highest cost to benefit ratio of any open source humanoid. The relatively low expense and ease of creation allows for anyone with a 3-D printer to create the humanoid, which enables further research to be done on humanoid robotics.
“This could be applied for a plethora of things,” Choi said. “People talk about AGI, or artificial general intelligence, with ChatGPT; this is AGR, artificial general robotics. So in essence, it’s like ‘I don’t wanna do my laundry, I wish this humanoid could do my laundry for me’ or washing dishes or doing healthcare tasks. If you think about the medical field, most people are heading into retirement homes simply because they can’t clean up after themselves.”
Choi cites the science fair as a big motivator, as it helps to guide students to create projects they never would have otherwise, as well as other experiences in the MST magnet.
“I would say the engineering program at Manual. Obviously, this is a little bit beyond the curriculum, but I think the same principles, the same ideas are what’s in the engineering program and that’s being evermore developed and I’m really excited for where that’s going,” Choi said. “I really want to thank Ms. Polevchak and Ms. Conti, as well as Ms. Alesia Williams, and they’re all really great support for me.”
As Choi transitions to college, he’s planning to push his robot into real-world application, and open-source his files soon. This will enable anyone in the world to 3-D print his robot.
