Leonardo da Vinci designed a robot knight for a Milan pageant around 1495.
The figure was a humanoid automaton dressed in armor. Drawings and reconstructions indicate that an internal system of pulleys, cables, and gears could make the knight sit, stand, raise its arms, and move its visor or jaw. The mechanism was powered by people or weights rather than by electricity.
Leonardo prepared the design while working for Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan. It was probably intended as theatrical entertainment and a display of engineering skill, not as an autonomous machine or a battlefield weapon. No original robot knight has survived, and historians cannot confirm every movement attributed to it.
The term “robot” is modern: it comes from a 1920 Czech play and was not used in Leonardo’s lifetime. For that reason, “robot knight” is a convenient modern label for an armored automaton. It is different from Leonardo’s later mechanical-lion concept.