THE ANNUAL IET LECTURE

Professor Bob Stone, Virtual and Augmented Reality: The Hype, The Facts, The Future
The annual Colyton Grammar School IET Lecture

On the Tuesday evening of science week, Professor Bob Stone, Director of the University of Birmingham’s Human Interfaces Technologies Team came in to give The Institute of Engineering and Technology’s annual Colyton Grammar School Lecture about virtual and augmented reality.

Prof Stone being introduced by Dr Lester from the IET

It was a very interesting and engaging talk, covering the uses of virtual and augmented reality in a range of situations such as physiotherapy and diving, as well as the use of mixed reality (a combination of virtual and augmented reality) for the use of military and medical training. In his lecture, Professor Stone explained that, while virtual and augmented reality have a very well publicised use in gaming, there are many other uses for the technology.

Attendees trying out the VR and AR in the Cottrill Hall

Before and after the lecture, Professor Stone and his team had brought in some of the latest Virtual and Augmented reality technology that they had been working on, for attendees to test for themselves.  It was very interesting to see how the physical technology is progressing and to experience what virtual reality is like when using it. I got the opportunity to try out a piece of software that ran a virtual garden which was being developed to help medical patients in pain to be able to remove themselves from the real world and distract themselves.  Overall it was a fantastic lecture, it was very interesting and great fun!

Mr Lynch, the school's STEM Coordinator said: “It was a pleasure to host Dr Stone and his team for the annual community IET lecture.  The work that he and his team are doing is truly inspiring and it puts to bed any misconceptions that VR and AR technologies will only be used for novelty purposes.  I look forward to working with Dr Lester from the IET for next year’s lecture!”

David B, Year 13