Leonardo da Vinci sketched a robotic knight for a 1495 court entertainment in Milan.
The design is based on drawings in Leonardo’s notebooks and is usually dated to around 1495, when he worked for Ludovico Sforza. The armored figure was designed to sit, stand, raise its arms, and move its head and jaw through a system of cables, pulleys, and gears. It was not a robot in the modern electronic sense; it was a mechanical automaton powered by physical mechanisms.
Leonardo’s original machine has not survived, and no contemporary report conclusively proves that it was completed. In 2002, roboticist Mark Rosheim built a working reconstruction based on Leonardo’s sketches. That reconstruction helped demonstrate that the proposed mechanism could produce several of the movements shown in the drawings.
The knight should not be confused with Leonardo’s mechanical lion. The lion was a later animal-shaped ceremonial automaton, while the robotic knight was a human-shaped armored figure associated with Milanese court entertainment.