Leonardo da Vinci’s wagon that moved through clockwork-like mechanisms is called the self-propelled cart.
Leonardo designed the cart around 1478–1480. Springs wound inside drums supplied the power, while a steering system could be set in advance using a programmable mechanism. The result was a vehicle that could move without being pushed or pulled by an animal.
The surviving drawing is incomplete, so historians and engineers have reconstructed the cart in different ways. In 2006, a team at the Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence built a working model based on Leonardo’s design. The reconstruction demonstrated that the mechanism could move under its own stored power.
The cart is sometimes called a robot because it could perform a programmed movement, but it was not an autonomous robot in the modern electronic sense. It had no computer, sensors, or feedback system. Its importance lies in the combination of springs, gears, and preset steering.