What was Leonardo da Vinci’s human-shaped machine commonly called?

Leonardo da Vinci’s human-shaped machine is commonly called the mechanical knight.

Leonardo designed the automaton around 1495, probably for a pageant or celebration at the court of Ludovico Sforza in Milan. The figure wore armor and was powered by an internal system of cables, gears, and pulleys. Reconstructions based on Leonardo’s drawings show that it could perform human-like movements such as sitting, standing, raising its arms, and moving its jaw.

The machine was not an intelligent robot in the modern electronic sense. It had no computer, sensors, or independent reasoning. Its actions were controlled mechanically by the arrangement of internal parts. The nickname “robot” is therefore a modern description of its function, not a term used by Leonardo.

A full-scale reconstruction was built by Mark Rosheim in 2002 after researchers examined Leonardo’s anatomical and mechanical sketches. The project helped demonstrate that the design was mechanically plausible, even though no original knight survives.