Professor Bob Stone

Bob Stone is Emeritus Professor of eXtended Realities and Human-Centred Design at the University of Birmingham, and Director of its Human Interface Technologies (HIT) Team. He holds a BSc in Psychology (UCL, 1979) and an MSc in Ergonomics (UCL, 1981), has been a Chartered Psychologist since 1989 and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors since 2003, and held the Chair in Interactive Multimedia Systems at Birmingham from 2003 to 2019.

From 1980 to 1989 he did defence human factors research, latterly as a group leader at British Aerospace's Sowerby Research Centre in Bristol. In 1989 he joined the National Advanced Robotics Research Centre in Salford, where the university says he set up the world's first industrial VR team in 1993. He led the development of MIST_VR, an early keyhole surgery skills trainer. He was born in Plymouth.

On Dartmoor

In 2014 his team built a virtual reconstruction of the Burrator and Sheepstor Halt on the old Yelverton to Princetown railway, shown at Burrator. In September 2018 the same team found a Second World War anti-torpedo net on the bed of Burrator Reservoir, using sonar surveys and small remotely operated vehicles, working with South West Water. He also flies drones on Dartmoor, with permission: the team's drone footage of the moor was used to simulate the view from a helicopter in a Chinook medic-training project, and in July 2024 he published a 360 degree video of Fox Tor Mire near Princetown using drone and 360 degree footage.

Taking heritage to people who cannot get out

The team takes virtual reality experiences to hospices, including Primrose Hospice, for people who cannot easily get out and about. He also led the Virtual Mayflower project, launched online on 16 September 2020 for the 400th anniversary of the voyage. His own account is that he first experienced VR at NASA's Ames Research Center in California in 1987.

Honours

Ministry of Defence Chief Scientific Advisor's Commendation (2011); Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors Innovation Award (2020); inducted into the Augmented World Expo XR Hall of Fame (2024, as given on his university profile).

Explore further

• Professor Bob Stone on YouTube (360 degree and virtual reality videos)
• University of Birmingham staff profile
• Augmented World Expo XR Hall of Fame
• University of Birmingham: virtual reality comes to Burrator (2014)
• University of Birmingham: torpedo net found at Burrator (2018)
• University of Birmingham: virtual reality Chinook to help train medics (2016)
• Primrose Hospice: virtual reality for patients