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

Leonardo da Vinci designed a robotic knight for a Milan court pageant.

The machine was probably created around 1495 for festivities at the court of Ludovico Sforza. Leonardo’s drawings and notes indicate that an armored figure could sit, stand, raise its arms, and move its head and jaw through an internal system of cables, pulleys, and gears.

The original robot has not survived, and historians infer its construction from Leonardo’s surviving sketches and descriptions. In 2002, roboticist Mark Rosheim built a working reconstruction based on that evidence. The reconstruction demonstrated that the mechanism could perform the proposed movements.

The robotic knight is often called a humanoid robot, but it was an automaton powered by mechanical components rather than electricity or software. It should also be distinguished from Leonardo’s mechanical lion, another court-entertainment design associated with later events.