Leonardo Da Vinci : Automazioni e Robotica = Automations and Robotics

by Pedretti, Carlo; Taglialagamba, Sara; Niccolai, Gabriele (CON)

• ISBN13: 9788895686257
• ISBN10: 889568625X
• Edition: Bilingual
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-12-31
• Publisher: David Brown Book Co

Summary

One of the most exciting challenges faced by Leonardo was to create robots made to resemble human or animal, or rather automatic self-operating devices. The technological excellence achieved during the XV century and the impetus in Mechanics and Engineering developed in Leonardo a growing interest in humanoid automata and in self-operating machines that interested many scholars still nowadays. Besides many researchers, who are interested in this thorny problem, share the hypothesis that Leonardo studied automata and attempted to sketch some projects on his manuscripts. In fact, pulleys and gears are the real 'stars' of the famous folio 216v-b [579r] in the Codex Atlanticus, associated with the project of the automaton or robot. Due to the lack of a main project, this drawing leaves some pending questions. This project was the result of the research carried out by the artist in the field of anatomy, studies partially lost and partially recorded in the Codex Huygens, kept at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. Therefore Leonardo traced the idea of a sort of Robotics, a so-called anathomia artificialis: studying the human body, he came to the creation of a wonderful humanised machine. The artist-craftsman could not receive a higher consecration. Leonardo's automata are the subjects of the research of this book that collects the results presented by scholars that have studied Leonardo from different points of view.