What mechanical knight did Leonardo da Vinci design to sit, stand, and move its arms?

Leonardo da Vinci designed a mechanical knight, commonly called Leonardo’s robot, that could sit, stand, and move its arms.

Leonardo created the design around 1495 for a pageant or entertainment at the court of Ludovico Sforza in Milan. The machine wore armor and was operated by a system of pulleys, cables, and gears hidden inside its body. Its movements were limited compared with modern robots, but the mechanism could imitate human actions.

The robot was not an electronic machine and did not use artificial intelligence. It was an automaton: a machine whose programmed mechanical action allows it to operate without continuous direct control.

The original mechanism was lost, but engineer Mark Rosheim studied Leonardo’s drawings and built a working reconstruction in the early 21st century. The reconstruction helped demonstrate how the internal linkage could produce the movements described by the sketches.