Leonardo da Vinci designed a mechanical humanoid known as Leonardo's robot or the robot knight for a court performance around 1495.
The design was prepared while Leonardo worked for Ludovico Sforza in Milan. Drawings show an armored figure whose internal system of cables, pulleys, and gears could make movements such as sitting, standing, and moving its arms. The machine was probably intended as a theatrical or ceremonial automaton rather than an autonomous robot in the modern electronic sense.
No original machine has survived, and historians cannot prove that the planned device was completed for the 1495 celebration. The design was reconstructed in the 20th century from Leonardo's notebooks, especially studies in the Codex Atlanticus and related drawings. Those reconstructions demonstrated that the mechanism could produce the limited movements shown in the plans.
The phrase robot knight can be misleading because Leonardo's machine had no computing system or artificial intelligence. It was a mechanically programmed automaton, powered by human setup and physical linkages. Its importance lies in the unusually detailed engineering of a human-shaped machine.