As the story of the missing OceanGate submersible began to dominate headlines, people began raising eyebrows over the fact that the sketchy looking vessel used a $40 video game controller to navigate the ocean depths. During a CBS News report from last year, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush stunned reporter David Pogue when he pulled out the Logitech gamepad used to control the tiny submersible that’s roughly the size of a minivan.
While the jokes were flying over the submersible using an off-brand video game controller for its steering mechanism, Vice reported that using controllers to operate “serious military equipment” has become an increasingly common practice thanks to the device’s precision and ease of use:
Controllers are great off-the-shelf solutions because they’re cheap, and younger recruits are already familiar with them. It’s not just submarines. The U.S. Army has used Xbox controllers to maneuver bomb disposal robots. The British military has developed a driverless all-terrain vehicle controlled by an Xbox controller. In Israel, there’s a tank that uses an Xbox controller.
According to Vice, when the military isn’t using actual controllers on its equipment, it’s taking great pains to replicate them. The U.S. Army’s M-SHORAD combat vehicle has a controller that looks like an old school Nintendo 64 gamepad, and the Challenger 2 tank has controls that would make any gamer feel right at home.
Make no mistake, the OceanGate submersible took numerous risks with its voyage to the Titanic, but using a video game controller surprisingly isn’t one of them.
(Via Vice)