What human-shaped machine did Leonardo da Vinci design around 1495?

Leonardo da Vinci designed a human-shaped machine known as the robot knight around 1495.

The design was created during Leonardo’s work for Ludovico Sforza in Milan and may have been intended for a court entertainment. The armored figure was based on a medieval knight and used cables, pulleys, gears, and levers hidden inside its torso. Reconstructions suggest that it could sit, stand, raise its arms, and move its head and jaw.

Leonardo’s original notes do not clearly call the machine a robot; that label is modern. The figure is identified from anatomical and mechanical drawings discovered in the Codex Atlanticus and related studies. Because the surviving evidence is incomplete, reconstructions necessarily make some interpretive choices.

The robot knight is important as an early example of humanoid mechanical design, not as an autonomous artificial intelligence. Its actions were controlled by mechanical linkages rather than software or independent thought.