What type of mechanical robot did Leonardo da Vinci design for a court celebration?

Leonardo da Vinci designed a mechanical knight, an armored humanoid automaton intended for a court celebration.

Leonardo developed the design in Milan around 1495 for the festivities of Ludovico Sforza. The robot was built from wood, leather, and metal parts and was operated by cables and pulleys. Its internal mechanisms were arranged so that the figure could perform humanlike actions such as sitting, standing, and moving its arms.

No original machine survives, and historians long knew the robot mainly from Leonardo’s anatomical and mechanical notes. In the twentieth century, researchers reconstructed versions of it from those drawings. The reconstructions helped demonstrate that the design was mechanically plausible.

The mechanical knight was not an autonomous robot in the modern electronic sense. It had no computer, sensors, or electric motor. It was a programmable-looking mechanical automaton powered by human-set mechanisms.