Leonardo da Vinci designed a robotic knight with an internal system of pulleys and gears.
The machine was planned for a Milanese festival in 1495, during the rule of Ludovico Sforza. Leonardo’s notes and sketches indicate that a human-shaped armored figure could sit, stand, move its arms, and operate its jaw through mechanical linkages. The design was hidden beneath armor modeled on a medieval knight.
No original robotic knight has survived, and historians cannot prove exactly whether Leonardo completed one. In 2002, roboticist Mark Rosheim built a working model based on Leonardo’s surviving drawings. The reconstruction demonstrated several of the proposed movements.
The machine is often called Leonardo’s robot, but it was an automaton rather than a programmable electronic robot. Its actions depended on fixed mechanical arrangements, much like other Renaissance automata and clockwork devices.