Titan implosion: Was Titanic submersible operated with a video-game controller?

The implosion of the Titan submersible on a deep-sea expedition to the Titanic wreckage has put the spotlight on how it was operated.

The submersible was controlled by what the company's now-deceased CEO once referred to as a video game controller.

"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.

The handheld device reportedlyresembled the widely available Logitech F710 wireless gamepad.

However, it remains unclear if the Titan-operatorOceanGate was still using the video game controller on the submersible for the recent trip which ended in a tragedy.

Also watch |Titan Submersible found in pieces after imploding in North Atlantic

The now-imploded submersible was a five-person sub that could reach Titanic, the ill-fated ship lying in depths nearly 2.5 miles below the ocean's surface.

"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," Write told the publication.

He further said that people who are good at video games could probably figure out how to use such joysticks. But if things go haywire, the computer systems' knowledge comes to the rescue.

"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.

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