What humanoid machine did Leonardo da Vinci design for a 1495 Milan court festival?

Leonardo da Vinci designed a mechanical knight for a 1495 court festival in Milan.

The machine was probably created for festivities organized by Ludovico Sforza, Leonardo’s patron. Concealed mechanisms based on pulleys, cables, and gears could make the armored figure sit, stand, raise its visor, and move its arms. Leonardo’s surviving notes and anatomical studies helped him think about how a human-shaped machine might move.

The original robot has not survived, so historians cannot verify every movement attributed to it. In 2002, roboticist Mark Rosheim built a working reconstruction based on Leonardo’s drawings and descriptions. That reconstruction showed that the central mechanical concept was plausible.

The device is often described as an early robot, although “robot” is a modern word coined in the twentieth century. Leonardo’s machine was an automaton for court entertainment, not an autonomous artificial intelligence system.