What mechanical figure did Leonardo da Vinci design for a 1495 celebration in Milan?

Leonardo da Vinci designed a robotic knight, a humanoid automaton associated with a 1495 celebration in Milan.

Leonardo prepared the design while working for Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan. The figure was intended to sit, stand, raise its arms, and move its head and jaw through a system of cables, pulleys, and gears. It was probably conceived as theatrical entertainment rather than as an intelligent machine or autonomous military device.

No original robot knight has survived, and historians cannot prove that the complete machine was built for the celebration. The design became widely known after modern researchers reconstructed it from Leonardo’s anatomical and mechanical drawings. Those reconstructions show that the mechanism could plausibly produce the documented movements.

Calling it a “robot” is convenient but anachronistic. The modern word refers to a programmable or autonomous machine, whereas Leonardo’s figure was a mechanical automaton operated by internal mechanisms.