What Leonardo da Vinci design is known as the world’s first humanoid robot?

Leonardo da Vinci’s humanoid automaton is known as the mechanical knight. He designed it around 1495 for a Milanese court entertainment, using a system of pulleys, cables, gears, and a partly articulated suit of armor.

The knight could reportedly sit, stand, raise its arms, and move its visor and jaw when the internal mechanisms were operated. Leonardo’s surviving notes show that he studied human anatomy and mechanical motion closely, making the design an early attempt to reproduce coordinated human movement with machinery.

No complete original robot survives, and the reconstruction of its abilities comes from Leonardo’s drawings and technical interpretation. The term “robot” is modern; the word itself was introduced centuries later. For that reason, the machine is best described historically as an automaton or mechanical knight rather than an electronic robot.