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Profile: Dr Tony Hirst

Dr Tony Hirst

The Open University, Faculty of Mathematics, Computing and Technology, Communication and Systems Department

Tony Hirst is a Lecturer in the Department of Communication and Systems at The Open University and regular blogger at OUseful.info. With a background in electronics and artificial intelligence, he has authored on OU courses ranging from robotics to information skills, and most recently a course on computer game design and appreciation. He has been The Open University's academic representative on BBC Radio's Click On and Digital Planet. Read more about Dr Tony Hirst

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Articles (31)

Browse all OpenLearn articles by Dr Tony Hirst

Robot cars, part 1: Parking the future for now

Robot cars, part 1: Parking the future for now New content Copyrighted imageCredit: Brett Critchley | Dreamstime.com
Introductory Level Updated 21 May 2013
By Dr Tony Hirst
In part one of this two-part series of aticles, we look at something that challenges many drivers - parking.
Read more : Robot cars, part 1: Parking the future for now

An alternative route to the electric car

An alternative route to the electric car Copyrighted imageCredit: Berlinfoto | Dreamstime.com
Introductory Level Updated 30 Apr 2013
By Dr Tony Hirst
Is the future of the car electric?
Read more : An alternative route to the electric car

Lighting up the roads of the future

Lighting up the roads of the future
Introductory Level Updated 29 Apr 2013
By Dr Tony Hirst
How far down the road are we in the technological evolution of our highways?
Read more : Lighting up the roads of the future

Emergency news - A changing communications landscape

Emergency news - A changing communications landscape Creative commons imageCredit: Sue Haskerlicensedfor reuse under CC BY-SA 2.0
Introductory Level Updated 16 Apr 2013
By Dr Tony Hirst
What role does communication technology play in emergency events such as the Boston Marathon explosions? 
Read more : Emergency news - A changing communications landscape

A dark future for warehousing?

A dark future for warehousing? Creative commons imageCredit: FlySilicensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Introductory Level Updated 14 Mar 2013
By Dr Tony Hirst
Dr Tony Hirst asks: If robots are at work, do we need to have the lights on?
Read more : A dark future for warehousing?

Article Comments (15)

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Diary of a data sleuth: Data-scraping the sick bucket

Copyrighted imageCredit: Mabe123 | Dreamstime.com
Comment posted by zy9961 on 1 Feb 2013
Being pretty poor at maths throughout my school life has meant that I sort of distrust/mistrust?/ numbers, preferring logic to weight in an argument. The way I have always looked at things is this way; if ten of the boys in my class, or out in the jungle schoolyard said collectively...
Read more: Diary of a data sleuth: Data-scraping the sick bucket

Mapping Live Shipping Data Around the Isle of Wight

Copyrighted imageCredit: Dreamstime
Comment posted by zy4424 on 13 Jan 2013
as outlined above the Isle of Wight is a great place for observing ships and all manner of nautical vessels, however the Isle of Wight offers much more than this. There are many experienxes to be had, both old and new and there is somethingfor everybody. If you...
Read more: Mapping Live Shipping Data Around the Isle of Wight

Should robots have rights?

Creative commons imageCredit: erin m under CC-BY-NC licence
Comment posted by zz916996 on 29 Apr 2012
I don't think that is necessary for now.How can we be talking about robot right when human right is yet strictkly adhere by some other nations. The battle for human right has not be won and we are thinking of robot right. we should not put the cart before the...
Read more: Should robots have rights?

Riot mapping and social media

Creative commons imageCredit: By eldh via Flickr under Creative Commons license
Comment posted by zz884800 on 5 Feb 2012
hello Tony Hirst i wanted to ask how iam supposed to visualise my yahoo pipes data into a map. i found a wikipedia page that uses HTML iam trying to highlight the internet usage of each country in the table i got as far as the pipes, i am having difficulty...
Read more: Riot mapping and social media

Riot mapping and social media

Creative commons imageCredit: By eldh via Flickr under Creative Commons license
Comment posted by zz813777 on 15 Aug 2011
This is an excellent short account of real time mapping. It opened my eyes to the possibilities of using social networks in a rather useful way I shall try it
Read more: Riot mapping and social media

My Comments (1)

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Free as in freedom, not as in price

Creative commons imageCredit: Fernando Cavalcanti / Campus Party under CC-BY-NC-SA licence
Comment posted by ajh59 on 11 Mar 2011
I think that references in the first part of the interview are made in the sense of 'little-o' open source software as in the "open" availability of the source code, rather than in the sense of openly licensed software produced through an open source development model. I thought the notion...
Read more: Free as in freedom, not as in price

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Profile: Dr Tony Hirst

Academic advisor for:
A partial history of OU adventures in lego engineering

Research:

Hopgood, A. A. and Hirst, A. J. (2007). Keeping a distance-education course current through elearning and contextual assessment. IEEE Transactions on Education, 50(1), pp. 85–96.

Johnson, Jeff and Hirst, Tony (2005). Robots, art and complexity science. In: Complexity Symposium: Art, Complexity and Technology: Their Interaction in Emergence, 5-6 May 2005, Torino, Italy.

Latif-Shabgahi, G. and Hirst, A. J. (2005). A fuzzy voting scheme for hardware and software fault tolerant systems. Fuzzy Sets and Systems, 150(3), pp. 579–598.

Rosewell, Jonathan; Johnson, Jeffrey; Hirst, Tony and Price, Blaine (2005). Robotics and the meaning of life: a practical guide to things that think. In: CAL '05 'Virtual Learning?', 4-6 April 2005, Bristol, UK.

Johnson, Jeffrey; Hirst, Tony and Garner, Steven (2003). Learning from designing the RoboFesta - Blue Peter robots. Artificial Life and Robotics, 7 pp. 22–27.

Browse Dr Tony Hirst's latest research on Open Research Online