What Leonardo da Vinci automaton was designed as a seated armored knight?

Leonardo da Vinci’s mechanical knight was an automaton designed as a seated armored knight.

Leonardo appears to have designed the robot around 1495 for a pageant at the court of Ludovico Sforza in Milan. The machine was based on a suit of armor and an internal system of cables, gears, and pulleys. Reconstructions indicate that it could perform human-like actions such as sitting, standing, moving its arms, and moving its jaw.

The original mechanism was not preserved, so historians cannot inspect a complete surviving machine. In 2002, roboticist Mark Rosheim built a reconstruction based on Leonardo’s drawings and notes. The reconstruction helped demonstrate that the concept could work mechanically.

The mechanical knight was an automaton, not an autonomous robot in the modern software-controlled sense. It operated through prearranged mechanical motion. It is also distinct from Leonardo’s later mechanical lion, another courtly spectacle with a different form and purpose.