Leonardo da Vinci’s articulated mechanical figure was the robotic knight. He designed it around 1495 for a pageant in Milan, using gears, cables, and pulleys to imitate human movements.
The knight was enclosed in armor and was reportedly intended to move its arms, sit, stand, and raise its visor. The surviving evidence comes from Leonardo’s sketches and notes rather than a complete original machine. Modern reconstructions have shown that the proposed mechanisms could produce several of the described motions.
The machine is often called Leonardo’s robot, but that label is modern. It was not an autonomous artificial-intelligence system. Its movements would have been mechanically programmed by the arrangement of internal parts and by an operator or stored mechanical motion.
The design demonstrates Leonardo’s study of anatomy and mechanics. He analyzed joints and movement in both living bodies and machines, making the knight an important example of Renaissance automata. Its likely connection with court entertainment distinguishes it from Leonardo’s military devices.