What type of robot did Leonardo da Vinci design for a Milanese court festival?

Leonardo da Vinci designed a humanoid robot for a Milanese court festival.

The machine is commonly called Leonardo’s robot or mechanical knight. Notes and drawings from about 1495 show a figure in German-Italian medieval armor whose internal mechanisms could imitate human actions. The robot was designed to sit, stand, raise its visor, and move its arms through a system of pulleys, cables, and gears.

Leonardo likely created the automaton for a pageant organized by Ludovico Sforza in Milan. No original robot survives, and the festival record does not provide a complete technical description. Much of what is known comes from the Codex Atlanticus and related anatomical-mechanical studies.

In 2002, roboticist Mark Rosheim built a working reconstruction based on Leonardo’s drawings. The reconstruction showed that several of the proposed movements were mechanically plausible. Calling it a “robot” is modern terminology: Renaissance audiences would have understood it as an automaton, a self-moving machine used for spectacle.