What mechanical figure did Leonardo da Vinci design to sit, stand, and move its arms like a human?

Leonardo da Vinci designed a mechanical knight, an early humanoid automaton capable of sitting, standing, and moving its arms.

He developed the design around 1495 while working in Milan. The knight’s internal system used gears, cables, and pulleys controlled by a crank. The armor concealed the mechanism, allowing the figure to imitate selected human movements.

The machine was probably intended as a spectacular court entertainment rather than a practical robot. Leonardo’s drawings reveal how he analyzed joints and body motion mechanically. They also show the close relationship between Renaissance theater, military armor, and engineering.

The original device has not survived. In the modern era, researchers built reconstructions based on Leonardo’s surviving sketches. Those replicas demonstrate the plausibility of the design but are not the original automaton.