I recently got this book from the library and it looks promising. The author, Mark Rosheim, seems to have put together stuff from various Da Vinvi manuscripts to construct automatas based on the design. Here is the description of the book from the publisher.
Leonardo´s Lost Robots reinterprets Leonardo da Vinci’s mechanical design work, revealing a new level of sophistication not recognized by art historians or engineers. By identifying his major technological projects, the book revisits Leonardo’s legacy of notebooks, showing that apparently unconnected fragments from dispersed manuscripts actually comprise cohesive designs for functioning automata. Using the rough sketches scattered throughout almost all of Leonardo’s papers, Rosheim has reconstructed Leonardo’s programmable cart, which was the platform for other automata: a Robot Lion, a Robot Knight, and a hydraulically powered automaton for striking a bell. Through a readable, lively narrative, Mark Rosheim recounts his adventures rediscovering and reconstructing da Vinci’s designs. In a foreword, the world-renowned Leonardo scholar Carlo Pedretti details the significance of these reconstructions for our understanding of Leonardo’s oeuvre.
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