Leonardo da Vinci designed a robotic knight as a programmable humanoid automaton.
The machine was created for a Milanese court spectacle around 1495, during Leonardo’s service to Ludovico Sforza. It was described as an armored figure capable of movements such as sitting, standing, raising its arms, and moving its head and jaw through an internal system of gears and cables.
Leonardo’s surviving notes do not provide a complete construction manual, so modern accounts rely on related drawings and mechanical studies. In 2002, roboticist Mark Rosheim built a working interpretation based on Leonardo’s surviving material.
The machine is often called Leonardo’s robot, but it was not an electronic robot in the modern sense. It was a mechanical automaton operated by programmed motions, making it an important early example of robotics in the historical and conceptual sense.