What is the name of Leonardo da Vinci’s robotic knight design, sketched around 1495?

Leonardo’s robot is the name of his humanoid automaton design sketched around 1495. The design appears in notebooks made while Leonardo worked for Ludovico Sforza in Milan, probably for a court pageant or festival.

The robot was intended to sit, stand, move its arms, and operate its jaw through a system of pulleys, cables and gears. Its armor-like exterior resembles a German-Italian medieval knight, which is why it is often called Leonardo’s mechanical knight.

Leonardo did not leave a complete construction manual, and no original machine survives. In 2002, roboticist Mark Rosheim built a working interpretation from the drawings. That reconstruction showed that the mechanism could perform several of the movements Leonardo planned, although modern builders must infer missing details.

The robot is sometimes confused with Leonardo’s mechanical lion, a separate automaton made for a French royal entry in 1515. Both designs demonstrate Leonardo’s interest in programmable-looking mechanical motion centuries before modern robotics.