Leonardo da Vinci designed an armored robot knight for a Milanese court spectacle in 1495.
The machine was created for festivities organized under Ludovico Sforza in Milan. Leonardo’s drawings show a human-shaped figure wearing armor and operated by cables, pulleys and a system of levers. The mechanism could reportedly sit, stand, raise its visor and move its arms.
The original machine has not survived, so the robot’s exact performance cannot be demonstrated directly. Modern reconstructions have been made from Leonardo’s anatomical and mechanical sketches, including a reconstruction displayed in Milan in 2002.
The robot knight was not an artificial-intelligence system. It was a programmable mechanical automaton, meaning that its movements came from linked mechanical parts. Its design shows how Leonardo applied studies of human anatomy to theatrical engineering.