Leonardo da Vinci designed a robotic knight as an articulated armored figure around 1495.
Leonardo prepared the design in connection with a festival or court spectacle in Milan. The figure was intended to wear armor and perform humanlike movements, including sitting, standing, and moving its arms. A system of cables, pulleys, and gears inside the armor translated the motion of a crank into movement of the limbs.
The original machine was not known to have survived. In the twentieth century, researchers reconstructed the robot from Leonardo’s drawings and notes, demonstrating that the mechanism could perform several of the movements associated with the design.
The machine is often described as an early humanoid robot, but it was not an autonomous electronic robot. It was a mechanical automaton operated through internal mechanisms. Leonardo’s work belongs to the Renaissance tradition of theatrical automata, in which engineering and court entertainment were closely connected.