What was Leonardo da Vinci’s wheeled machine that could move without an external animal called?

Leonardo da Vinci’s wheeled machine that could move without an external animal is called the self-propelled cart.

Leonardo designed the cart in the late fifteenth century, probably for theatrical performances or court entertainment. Springs stored energy and released it through a system of gears, allowing the vehicle to travel for a limited distance without being pushed or pulled by an animal. Steering could be set in advance through parts of the mechanism.

The cart is often described as an early robot or the world’s first programmable machine. Those labels are useful comparisons, but they can be misleading. The device was not autonomous in the modern electronic sense; its movement was mechanically preset and powered by stored spring energy.

A working reconstruction was built in the twentieth century using Leonardo’s surviving drawings. It demonstrated that the basic mechanism could operate, although details of the original design remain uncertain because the surviving sketches do not explain every component.