Leonardo da Vinci designed a mechanical figure often called a robotic knight.
He prepared the design in 1495 for a pageant in Milan organized under the patronage of Ludovico Sforza. The machine was dressed in armor and could reportedly perform human-like movements, including sitting, standing, and moving its arms.
The mechanism worked through cables, gears, and a system of pulleys inside the armor. Leonardo’s surviving notes do not give a complete modern-style construction manual, so historians reconstruct its operation from drawings and related studies.
The device was not an autonomous robot in the modern electronic sense. It was a clockwork automaton powered by mechanical components. In 2002, engineer Mark Rosheim built a full-scale working version based on Leonardo’s plans, helping demonstrate that the design was mechanically plausible.