Leonardo da Vinci’s humanoid machine for a 1495 Milanese festival is known as the robot knight. Leonardo designed an armored figure with internal cables, pulleys and gears that could sit, stand, raise its arms and move its head and jaw.
The machine was probably created for festivities arranged by Ludovico Sforza at the court of Milan. Leonardo’s anatomical studies helped him organize the mechanical joints, while his experience with theatrical devices supplied the control mechanisms. Contemporary documentation is sparse, so historians cannot confirm exactly how much movement the original performed.
The robot knight became widely known after engineer Mark Rosheim reconstructed it from Leonardo’s Codex Atlanticus drawings. Rosheim’s model showed that the mechanism could plausibly produce the listed motions. It was not an autonomous robot in the modern electronic sense; it was a programmable mechanical automaton operated by preset cams and cables.