Leonardo da Vinci designed a robot knight, a mechanical figure enclosed in armor that could sit, stand, and move its arms.
The design was created in Milan around 1495, probably for a court spectacle organized for Ludovico Sforza. Leonardo studied human anatomy and translated the body's joints and motions into a system of cables, pulleys, and gears. The armor concealed the mechanism, making the figure appear to move like a person.
The robot was not an autonomous machine in the modern sense. It had no electronic controls or artificial intelligence, and its movements would have been limited and mechanically prearranged. The surviving evidence is based largely on sketches and notes rather than an intact original robot.
In 2002, roboticist Mark Rosheim built a working reconstruction using Leonardo's drawings. The reconstruction helped demonstrate that the mechanism could plausibly produce the documented movements. The robot knight is often confused with Leonardo's later mechanical lion, but the knight was an articulated armored figure, while the lion was a separate ceremonial automaton.