What Leonardo da Vinci automaton was a life-sized mechanical knight in armor?

Leonardo da Vinci's mechanical knight was a life-sized automaton in armor.

Leonardo designed the mechanical knight around 1495 for a pageant in Milan sponsored by Ludovico Sforza. The figure was intended to sit, stand, raise its arms, and move its head and jaw through an internal system of pulleys, cables, and gears. Its outer appearance was based on a German-Italian suit of armor.

The machine is often called Leonardo's robot, but that modern word can suggest electronic intelligence. Leonardo's design was a clockwork automaton: its actions came from mechanical linkages and stored motion, not software or autonomous reasoning.

No original mechanical knight survives, and the evidence comes mainly from Leonardo's notes and drawings. In 2002, robotics expert Mark Rosheim built a working reconstruction based on the surviving material. The reconstruction supported the idea that Leonardo had designed a practical moving figure, although details of the original mechanism remain uncertain.