What walking automaton did Leonardo da Vinci design with humanlike movements and a suit of armor?

Leonardo da Vinci designed a walking automaton known as the mechanical knight.

Leonardo’s drawings for the device date to about 1495 and are connected with his work for Ludovico Sforza in Milan. The machine was arranged inside a suit of armor and used cables, pulleys, and a supporting frame to imitate human actions. Reconstructions indicate that it could sit, stand, raise its arms, and move its jaw.

The automaton was probably intended for court entertainment or a pageant rather than combat. It was not a robot in the modern electronic sense: it had no computer, sensors, or autonomous power source. Its movements depended on mechanical linkages and an operator or carefully arranged sequence.

The knight was identified in the twentieth century from Leonardo’s technical drawings. In 2002, Mark Rosheim built a reconstruction based on the surviving plans and reported that it could perform the intended movements. This reconstruction helped demonstrate the sophistication of Leonardo’s mechanical design.