Leonardo da Vinci’s robotic knight was a human-shaped automaton with articulated mechanical parts. He designed it around 1495 for a celebration in Milan, where it may have been intended to entertain guests at the court of Ludovico Sforza.
The surviving sketches show a suit of armor containing cables, pulleys, gears, and a control system. The mechanism could reportedly move the arms, raise the visor, and move the jaw. Leonardo’s study of human anatomy helped him think about how joints and tendons might be reproduced mechanically.
The original knight has not survived, and the exact extent of its movements remains uncertain. In 2002, engineer Mark Rosheim built a working reconstruction based on Leonardo’s drawings and notes. Later reconstructions helped demonstrate that the concept was mechanically plausible.
The machine was not a modern autonomous robot. It had no electronic sensors, computer, or independent decision-making. In historical terms, it was an automaton: a programmed mechanical figure powered by human-made components.