A story that has grappled the entire world with enormous worry and anxiety is that of the search and rescue mission currently underway to find a missing submersible with five people on board that lost contact near the Titanic shipwreck. But as I closely followed the news, I also bumped into critics of OceanGate Expeditions, the company behind the missing submersible who have called out its use of an affordable off-the-shelf game controller, which also got me thinking about why using a 30 dollars gaming controller on such a highly risky and expensive expedition?
So out of curiosity, like many other online users who have been fixated on the game controller, I did my research in a bid to fully understand why using a gamepad in the first place to steer and navigate a sophisticated submersible in the treacherous deep sea. But before I share what I gathered, let’s first understand what a game controller truly is for the sake of those reading this article and not well-versed with gaming devices; so a gamepad is a device used with video games or entertainment systems to provide input to a video game, typically to control an object or character in the game.
I found out that it’s not that strange using a gaming controller like in this scenario; the missing submersible being controlled by a slightly-modified Logitech F710 wireless gamepad, because, for instance, several military vehicles use similar gamepads. Though the Titan’s use of a gaming controller, and a moderately cheap and old one at that, has stunned many people including myself, and added to the narrative that the submersible was a jury-rigged contraption, it’s not that strange.
A six-month-old insert from CBS Sunday Morning featured OceanGate Expeditions CEO Stockton Rush showing a journalist that the Titan is controlled with a slightly-modified Logitech F710 wireless gamepad. And based on what can be seen in the video, only the thumbsticks have been altered.
At the time of publication, we found the Logitech F710 available from several prominent retailers in South Africa, with prices ranging from R799 to R849, which is roughly equivalent to USD 40. It was first sold in 2010.
However, as a recent Vice article pointed out, numerous advanced vehicles are controlled with off-the-shelf gamepads — with the Xbox controller being particularly popular. The latest official Xbox wireless controller currently sells for between R1,299 and R1,499. Several generic knock-off models are available for less than R1,000.
The US Navy currently uses Xbox controllers on the USS Colorado submarine to control periscopes and photonic masts, while the US Army has also employed them for controlling bomb disposal robots. The Carmel, a hi-tech street-fighting Israeli tank that debuted in 2019, also uses an Xbox controller. Self-developed controllers often also mimic the basic design of gaming controllers.
An example of this is the US Army’s M-Shorad’s combat vehicle, which features a controller that bears a striking resemblance to that of the Nintendo 64 gaming console. The Challenger 2 tank’s fire controller also looks like a gamepad.
The major benefits of using off-the-shelf gamepads are that they’re cheap, avoid costly research and development, and are familiar to younger recruits who might have some experience playing video games. In the case of steering the Titan, it appeared to have been sufficient for at least three successful expeditions to the Titanic site since July 2021. And in the CBS Sunday Morning insert, Rush also said spare units were kept on board in case the primary one malfunctioned.
The Titan is a submersible deep-sea craft, so it’s not a submarine that can dive and get back to the surface by itself at will – it has to be launched and pulled back up by another vessel, in this case, the Canadian research ship Polar Prince. The Polar Prince, however, lost contact with the craft almost two hours after it launched on its dive down to the Titanic’s wreckage – the third annual trip of this sort the Titan has made to document the degradation of the famous ship due to metal-eating bacteria.
The Titan crew’s oxygen is expected to be depleted by around 08:30 on Thursday, 22 June 2023.
