What Leonardo da Vinci invention was a robot-like armored figure operated by cables and pulleys?

Leonardo da Vinci's robot-like armored automaton was the mechanical knight.

Leonardo designed the mechanical knight around 1495 for a pageant at the court of Ludovico Sforza in Milan. The machine was enclosed in armor and used a system of pulleys, cables, gears, and a supporting frame to imitate human actions. Reconstructions indicate that it could sit, stand, move its arms, and operate its jaw.

The automaton was a theatrical machine rather than an autonomous robot. Its movement came from mechanical linkages and stored or manually applied force, not electricity or artificial intelligence. The surviving design is incomplete, so modern builders have had to interpret some of the missing details.

In 2002, the roboticist Mark Rosheim built a working reconstruction based on Leonardo's drawings. The mechanical knight is often described as the first humanoid robot, but “robot” is a modern comparison; the historical object was a Renaissance automaton intended for court entertainment.