Leonardo da Vinci designed a humanoid machine in armor known as the robot knight.
Leonardo developed the design in Milan around 1495, during the period when he worked for Ludovico Sforza. The machine was intended for court entertainment and was built around a suit of armor containing a system of cables, pulleys, and levers. Those mechanisms could reproduce movements such as sitting, standing, raising the arms, and moving the head and jaw.
The robot knight was not a modern autonomous robot. It had no electronic control, computer, or artificial intelligence. Its actions were mechanical and limited to movements produced by the internal linkage system. The term “robot” is a modern description applied to a Renaissance automaton.
Leonardo’s original machine disappeared, but researchers reconstructed versions from his drawings and notes. These reconstructions helped show that the design’s mechanical anatomy was plausible and that the knight represented a serious study of human movement as well as a spectacle.