What human-shaped machine did Leonardo da Vinci design with movable arms and a jaw?

Leonardo da Vinci designed a robotic knight with movable arms and a movable jaw.

The machine was created for a pageant held at the court of Ludovico Sforza in Milan around 1495. Leonardo’s surviving notes and drawings indicate that the armored figure was powered by an internal system of cables, pulleys, and gears. It could sit, stand, move its arms, and move its jaw.

The robot was not an electronic robot. Renaissance engineers used the term automaton for machines that performed programmed or mechanically controlled movements. Leonardo’s knight belongs to that tradition and demonstrates how human anatomy could be translated into mechanical linkages.

A full-scale reconstruction was built by Mark Rosheim in the early 2000s from Leonardo’s drawings and related evidence. The reconstruction helped show that the design was mechanically plausible, although the original machine itself has not survived.