What mechanical figure did Leonardo da Vinci design that could imitate human movements?

Leonardo da Vinci designed a mechanical knight that could imitate some human movements.

Leonardo created the design in Milan around 1495 for a court entertainment organized for Ludovico Sforza. The figure wore armor and was operated by an internal system of pulleys, cables, and gears. Reconstructions indicate that it could sit, stand, move its arms, and move its jaw, although the exact range of the original machine remains uncertain.

The knight is often called Leonardo’s robot, but that modern term can be misleading. It had no electricity, computer, or programmable software. It was an automaton: a machine whose motion was produced by mechanical components and carefully arranged linkages.

The original figure disappeared, and its existence was inferred from Leonardo’s notebooks and related drawings. In 2002, engineer Mark Rosheim built a working reconstruction based on the surviving evidence. The project helped show that Leonardo’s mechanical concept was technically plausible.