Leonardo da Vinci’s humanoid automaton is commonly called Leonardo’s robot.
Leonardo designed the machine around 1495 for a pageant in Milan, probably under the patronage of Ludovico Sforza. It was dressed in medieval armor and contained a system of cables, pulleys, and gears that could make humanlike movements. Reconstructions indicate that it could sit, stand, move its arms, and move its jaw.
The robot was not an electronic machine and did not have programmable intelligence. In Leonardo’s period, “robot” was not a standard term; modern historians use it because the device was a self-operating mechanical figure. The original mechanism was not preserved, so modern reconstructions rely on Leonardo’s drawings and related engineering notes.
This invention differs from the mechanical lion, another Leonardo automaton associated with a royal spectacle. The robot represented an armored human figure, while the lion was an animal-shaped ceremonial machine.