Commercial or regulated
Sold at scale, or formally approved by a regulator.
25 milestones.
Google Announces TPU v4 Tensor Processing Unit
Google announced its fourth-generation Tensor Processing Unit (TPU v4) at Google I/O in 2021. The chip, designed specifically for large-scale machine-learning workloads, offered substantially higher performance than its predecessor and was made available to researchers via Google Cloud.
Waymo One Launches Fully Driverless Rides to the General Public in Phoenix, Arizona
On 8 October 2020, Waymo opened its Waymo One ride-hailing service to the general public in the greater Phoenix, Arizona area, operating without a safety driver in the vehicle, the first time a commercial autonomous vehicle service had done so at public scale.
LOVOT Companion Robot Unveiled by Groove X
In December 2018, Groove X, a Japanese robotics company founded by Kaname Hayashi, unveiled LOVOT, a companion robot designed to elicit emotional attachment rather than perform practical tasks, equipped with more than 50 sensors, a thermal camera array, and a neural-processing unit to recognise and respond to human behaviour.
Waymo One Commercial Ride-Hailing Service Launch
In December 2018, Waymo LLC launched Waymo One, a fare-charging autonomous ride-hailing service operating in the Greater Phoenix, Arizona area, marking the first time a driverless vehicle service had been made available to paying members of the public in the United States.
Movidius (Intel) Launches Neural Compute Stick
In July 2017, Movidius, an Intel subsidiary, released the Movidius Neural Compute Stick, a USB-form-factor device housing the Myriad 2 Vision Processing Unit, enabling developers to run inference from trained deep neural networks on low-power edge hardware without a remote server.
Ekso Bionics Receives FDA Clearance for EksoGT Powered Exoskeleton
Ekso Bionics developed a powered lower-limb exoskeleton enabling individuals with spinal cord injuries and stroke-related paralysis to stand and walk in clinical rehabilitation settings, receiving FDA clearance for its EksoGT device in 2016 after earlier clearances beginning in 2014.
Amazon Introduces Alexa and the Echo Smart Speaker
In November 2014, Amazon introduced Alexa, a cloud-based voice assistant, alongside the Amazon Echo smart speaker. Alexa accepted natural-language voice commands for tasks including music playback, information retrieval, smart-home control, and calendar management, bringing always-on voice interaction into consumer homes at scale.
Apple Releases Siri with iPhone 4S
On 4 October 2011, Apple announced Siri as an integrated feature of the iPhone 4S, making a conversational voice assistant, capable of natural-language queries, task execution, and third-party service calls, available to a mass consumer audience for the first time at that scale.
D-Wave Systems Announces D-Wave One, a 128-Qubit Quantum Annealing Computer Available for Commercial Purchase
In May 2011, D-Wave Systems announced the D-Wave One, a 128-qubit quantum annealing processor codenamed Rainier, marketed as the first commercially available quantum computer. Lockheed Martin purchased a system for approximately US $10 million, making it the first known commercial transaction for a quantum computing system.
Microsoft Research Develops Real-Time Human Pose Estimation for Kinect
In 2011, Jamie Shotton and colleagues at Microsoft Research Cambridge published a method for real-time human pose estimation from a single depth image, using randomised decision forests trained on synthetic data. The technique powered the skeleton-tracking feature of Microsoft Kinect and was presented at CVPR 2011.
REX Robotic Exoskeleton Enables Independent Walking for Paraplegics
In July 2010, REX Bionics of New Zealand publicly demonstrated the REX robotic exoskeleton, a self-supporting powered lower-limb device allowing paraplegic users to stand, walk, turn and navigate stairs without crutches, marking an early commercial step in AI-assisted assistive mobility.
I-LIMB: First Commercially Available Multi-Articulating Bionic Hand
In 2007, Touch Bionics of Livingston, Scotland launched the I-LIMB Hand, the first commercially available prosthetic hand with five individually powered, articulating fingers. Within a year roughly 200 patients had received the device, which used myoelectric signals from residual limb muscles to control grip patterns.
Dasarobot Genibo QD Consumer Pet Robot
In April 2006, South Korean company Dasarobot unveiled the Genibo QD, a consumer pet robot modelled on a dog and equipped with cameras, infrared sensors, and voice-recognition software designed to simulate emotional responses to its owner.
Criterion Online Writing Evaluation Service
Educational Testing Service launched the Criterion Online Writing Evaluation Service around 2003, a web-based tool that used natural language processing and machine learning to score student essays automatically, providing formative feedback intended to supplement instructor assessment.
iRobot Roomba Launch
In September 2002, iRobot Corporation released the Roomba, a disc-shaped autonomous vacuum cleaner priced at USD 199. The product demonstrated that a reactive, behaviour-based robot could navigate unstructured domestic environments without maps, bringing autonomous robotics into mainstream consumer households.
FDA Clears CyberKnife for Full-Body Tumour Treatment
In August 2001, the US Food and Drug Administration cleared the CyberKnife Robotic Radiosurgery System for treatment of tumours anywhere in the body, extending an earlier 1999 clearance limited to the head and neck. The system uses real-time image guidance and robotic positioning to deliver radiation with sub-millimetre accuracy.
Hawk-Eye Ball-Tracking System Developed by Paul Hawkins at Roke Manor Research
In 2001, Paul Hawkins, working at Roke Manor Research in Hampshire, developed Hawk-Eye, a computer-vision system that triangulates footage from multiple broadcast cameras to reconstruct the three-dimensional trajectory of a sports ball in near real time, first used in cricket television coverage.
FDA Clearance of the da Vinci Surgical System for Laparoscopic Surgery
In July 2000, the US Food and Drug Administration cleared Intuitive Surgical's da Vinci Surgical System for use in laparoscopic procedures, marking the first regulatory approval of a robotic-assisted surgical system for general laparoscopic surgery in the United States.
Sony AIBO Robot Dog Released
In May 1999, Sony Corporation released AIBO (Artificial Intelligence roBOt), model ERS-110, a consumer entertainment robot in the form of a dog. The robot used onboard processing and sensors to exhibit autonomous behaviour and express simulated emotional states, marking one of the first mass-market deployments of embodied AI behaviour.
NVIDIA GeForce 256: Introduction of the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)
In 1999, NVIDIA released the GeForce 256, which the company marketed as the first graphics processing unit (GPU), a single-chip processor capable of performing transform, lighting, clipping, and rendering operations that had previously required the host CPU, enabling sustained high-throughput parallel computation.
Second AI Winter
From approximately 1987 to 1993, AI research entered a second sustained contraction as commercial expert-system vendors collapsed, the Lisp machine market failed, and DARPA substantially reduced funding for AI programmes following unmet expectations from the preceding boom.
RB5X Personal Robot Introduced by RB Robot Corporation
In 1982, RB Robot Corporation, founded by Joseph Bosworth, introduced the RB5X, a dome-shaped autonomous personal robot programmable in TinyBASIC or the proprietary Savvy language, equipped with sonar, photodiode, and bumper sensors for navigating domestic environments without direct human guidance.
Commercial Lisp Machine Market: Symbolics and LMI
From 1980 onwards, Symbolics Inc. and Lisp Machines Inc. (LMI), both founded as spin-offs from the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, commercialised dedicated hardware workstations designed to run Lisp natively, offering large address spaces, garbage collection in hardware, and early graphical interfaces tailored to AI development.
XCON (R1) Expert System Developed by John P. McDermott at Carnegie Mellon University
John P. McDermott at Carnegie Mellon University developed R1 (later named XCON), a rule-based expert system built in OPS5, in collaboration with Digital Equipment Corporation. Deployed operationally by DEC in 1980, it automatically configured VAX-11/780 computer orders, replacing a labour-intensive manual process.
Boris Chess Computer Released by Applied Concepts
In 1978, Applied Concepts released Boris, a dedicated chess-playing microcomputer programmed by David Lindsay and running on a Fairchild F8 processor with 256 bytes of RAM. It was among the earliest mass-market standalone chess computers available to home consumers.