Leonardo da Vinci designed a robot knight, a mechanical humanoid intended for a Milan court spectacle.
The machine was planned around a suit of German-Italian medieval armor. Inside it, a system of cables, pulleys, and levers could make the figure sit, stand, raise its arms, and move its head and jaw.
Leonardo developed the design around 1495 while working for Ludovico Sforza in Milan. No original machine has survived, and historical evidence does not prove that the robot was built or publicly demonstrated in Leonardo's lifetime.
In the twentieth century, engineer Mark Rosheim reconstructed the mechanism from Leonardo's drawings and notes. That reconstruction helped show that the design was mechanically plausible, although it should not be confused with a documented modern programmable robot.