For those who are unaware: A couple billionaires, a pilot, and one of the billionaires’ son are currently stuck inside an extremely tiny sub a couple thousand meters under the sea (inside of the sub with the guys above).
They were supposed to dive down to the titanic, but lost connection about halfway down. They’ve been missing for the past 48 hours, and have 2 days until the oxygen in the sub runs out. Do you think they’ll make it?
Any game controller, would be insufficient to put 5 peoples lives in danger.
If you were going to use a game controller to do so anyway, you’d use one that can be easily replaced, maybe something manufactured in the past decade. That F710 is old (2011) and honestly didn’t rate all that well compared to other controllers of it’s time. It’s wireless, adding needless risk.
The certification is all part of it. The control systems need to have backups. The gamepad aspect is interesting because it’s blatantly spitting in the face of safety which seemed to be the CEO’s style anyway.
Would it have been better than a new xbox controller? I’m not sure, perhaps not if it the new one was at least wired.
dear God just think if the part that failed was the controllers batteries
I just … can’t
I wouldn’t trust that controller for a dungeon run in the Elder Scrolls Online and here’s this dude visiting the Titanic in person with one. They did say he has backups on board, though.
I work on robotics and drones for the military and we use game controllers for teleoperation all the time. There are some times we use more rugged and robust controllers, but they are essentially just expensive, yellow Playstation controllers with e-stop buttons on the bottom (look up Fort robotics controller).
I think you’d be surprised at how often the military uses game controllers for mission critical tech. The convergent design of game controllers has kind of solved the problem of minimal, handheld, input-output machines that are capable of commanding difficult procedures.
flying any passengers with em?
Rarely in my line of work but we do do it sometimes. To your point, outside of what I do I’m not sure how often game controllers are used in situations like passenger flight or submarines where you can’t just mash the e-stop button and bail out.
Yeah, I know the navy has used them for ages on robotic control.
And fly by wire is everywhere now. But the systems involved, they’re pretty hardened.
I think a wired control on it’s own isn’t a horrible sin, it just seems to me that in a world with as much tech as we have sitting around, someone can make something a little more rugged for something as critical as this particular part.
And of coure the elephant in the room is we have little data about this whole setup. It’s possible he had a laptop in there where he could open up a terminal, or maybe he had access to the lines and motors directly. If someone can reach back and trigger the ballast tank themselves, it negates a lot of control worries.
Good money is on explosive compression anyway. That hull shape is dodgy AF