Leonardo da Vinci’s robotic knight was a humanoid automaton capable of moving its arms and jaw.
Leonardo designed the machine around 1495 for a pageant in Milan sponsored by Ludovico Sforza. It wore armor and was operated by an internal system of pulleys, cables, and gears. Reconstructions based on Leonardo’s drawings show that the mechanism could sit, stand, raise its arms, and move its jaw.
The original robot has not survived, and the exact performance of the historical machine is uncertain. In 2002, roboticist Mark Rosheim built a working reconstruction after studying Leonardo’s notebooks. That reconstruction helped show how the internal mechanical layout could function.
The knight is often called a robot, although the modern word and concept came much later. In its own period, it was an automaton: a machine that produced apparently lifelike movement through hidden mechanical actions.