Stone is the founder and director of the Learning Agents Research Group (LARG) within the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in the Department of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin.

His main research interest in AI is understanding how we can best create complete intelligent agents. He considers adaptation, interaction and embodiment to be essential capabilites of such agents. Thus, his research focuses mainly on machine learning, multiagent systems and robotics. For Stone, the most exciting research topics are those inspired by challenging real-world problems. He believes that complete successful research includes both precise, novel algorithms and fully implemented and rigorously evaluated applications. His application domains have included robot soccer, autonomous bidding agents, autonomous vehicles, autonomic computing and social agents.