How the Titan submersible was operated has come under scrutiny following its implosion during a deep-sea voyage to the Titanic debris. A device that the company’s now-deceased CEO once likened to a video game controller was used to operate the submersible. “We run the whole thing with this game controller,” Stockton Rush, who himself was on-board the Titan submersible, told CBS News in 2022, was holding up the handheld device.
According to reports, the handheld device looked similar to the commonly accessible Logitech F710 wireless controller. It is still unknown if OceanGate, the Titan’s operator, was still utilizing the video game controller on the submersible during the latest voyage that ended tragically.
“I would expect the ‘real’ submersible controller to have a reliability of about one thousand times that of the games handset”: Wright
“Avionics is used all over the place, not just flying things,” Steve Wright, an associate professor of aerospace engineering at the University of the West of England was quoted as saying by CBS News, while pointing to a drone his students were working on, “to the extent that the- software we are using in that drone over there is almost the same software being used in submersibles as well.”
“In a sense, those little joysticks you see are like video game controllers, but it’s important to stress that they’re made to a much, much higher level of reliability and quality than just your random Xbox controller,” he said. The CBS report cited Wright as saying that while a video game controller might have most of the capabilities as a regular joystick controller on a sub, it still is not as reliable. “In fact, I would expect the ‘real’ submersible controller to have a reliability of about one thousand times that of the games handset,” Wright told the publication.
He continued by saying that skilled gamers could certainly find out how to operate these joysticks. However, the expertise of the computer systems comes to the rescue if things go awry. “It’s the same as when you get on a transatlantic flight and you see the pilots in the cockpit, most of the time, they’re sat there twiddling their thumbs, not doing much. But I, for one, am very glad that they’re sat there, trained up to the level that they are because they’ve got a much deeper understanding of the other things that might happen,” he said.