What robotic figure did Leonardo da Vinci design around 1495?

Leonardo da Vinci designed a mechanical knight around 1495.

The figure was an armored humanoid automaton powered by an internal system of gears, cables, and pulleys. Leonardo’s drawings indicate that the machine could perform movements such as sitting, standing, raising its visor, and moving its arms. The mechanism was arranged inside a body shaped like a medieval armored knight.

Leonardo developed the design while working for Ludovico Sforza in Milan. Court entertainments often used mechanical spectacles, and an animated armored figure would have combined military symbolism with advanced engineering. No contemporary record definitively proves that the complete robot was built, although some researchers believe a partial or related mechanism may have existed.

The design is called Leonardo’s robot or mechanical knight, but it was not an autonomous robot in the modern electronic sense. It had no computer, sensors, or independent decision-making. Its importance lies in its programmable-looking mechanical motion and in the unusually detailed way Leonardo explored human-shaped machines.