What kind of machine did Leonardo da Vinci design as a wearable mechanical figure?

Leonardo da Vinci designed a wearable mechanical figure known as a mechanical knight.

Leonardo created the design in 1495 for a pageant in Milan organized for Ludovico Sforza. The figure wore armor and used a system of pulleys, cables, gears, and levers to produce human-like movements. It could reportedly sit, stand, move its arms, and raise its visor.

The design appears in Leonardo’s Codex Madrid I, which was rediscovered in the 20th century. Because no original machine survives, historians reconstruct its operation from the drawings rather than from a working Renaissance example.

The mechanical knight is often called Leonardo’s robot, but “robot” is a modern description. The word robot was coined centuries later, in the 20th century. Leonardo’s machine was a mechanical automaton intended for entertainment and spectacle, not an electronic or autonomous robot in the modern sense.