What Leonardo da Vinci machine featured a seated mechanical knight that could move its limbs?

Leonardo da Vinci’s robot was a mechanical knight designed to move its limbs.

Leonardo probably designed the automaton around 1495 for a pageant in Milan organized for Ludovico Sforza. The knight wore armor and was built around a system of pulleys, cables, gears, and a control mechanism. Reconstructions indicate that it could sit, stand, raise its arms, and move its head and jaw.

The machine was not an artificial-intelligence robot. In Leonardo’s period, it was an automaton: a mechanical device that performed programmed movements. The original machine has not survived, and modern builders have reconstructed it from Leonardo’s notes and drawings.

The robot is often linked with Leonardo’s study of human anatomy and mechanical motion. Its design demonstrates how he translated observations of joints and muscles into mechanical parts.