Leonardo da Vinci designed a robot knight for a Milanese court celebration, probably held in 1495.
The machine was a wearable-looking suit of armor operated by a system of pulleys, cables, gears, and levers. Leonardo’s notes indicate that it could perform humanlike actions such as sitting, standing, raising its arms, and moving its jaw. The design was probably connected with a pageant organized for Ludovico Sforza at the court in Milan.
The robot was not an electronic robot and did not contain artificial intelligence. It was an automaton: a mechanical device whose programmed movements came from stored energy and carefully arranged parts. No original machine has survived, and historians infer its construction mainly from Leonardo’s drawings and notes.
Modern researchers and museums have built working interpretations. These reconstructions show that the mechanism could plausibly produce the movements described. The robot knight should not be confused with Leonardo’s self-propelled cart, which was a wheeled machine intended to move along a route.