What type of machine did Leonardo da Vinci design as an early humanoid robot?

Leonardo da Vinci designed a humanoid machine known as a robot knight.

Leonardo developed the design around 1495, probably while working in Milan for Ludovico Sforza. The machine was dressed in armor and used a system of pulleys, cables and gears to produce human-like movements. Reconstructions indicate that it could sit, stand, raise its arms and move its jaw.

The robot was not an electronic robot and did not use modern computing. It was an automaton: a mechanical device whose programmed motions came from internal mechanisms. The surviving evidence is mainly Leonardo's sketches and notes, so historians cannot document every movement of the original machine.

In 2002, roboticist Mark Rosheim built a working reconstruction using Leonardo's drawings. The project helped demonstrate how the mechanical arrangement could operate. The robot is often called Leonardo's mechanical knight, but “robot knight” is the concise name used for this invention.