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Navy Plans To Use Xbox 360 Controllers For New Periscope Systems Aboard Its Submarines (go.com)
According to ABC News, the U.S. Navy is planning to use Xbox 360 controllers to operate periscopes aboard its most advanced submarines. High-resolution cameras and large monitors are replacing the traditional rotating periscope in the Navy's Virginia-class subs. While they can be controlled by a helicopter-style stick, the Navy plans to integrate an Xbox controller into the system because they're more familiar to younger sailors and require less training. They are also considerably cheaper. The controller typically costs less than $30 compared to the $38,000 cost of a photonic mast handgrip and imaging control panel. The Xbox controller will be included as part of the integrated imaging system for Virginia-class subs beginning with the future USS Colorado. It is supposed to be commissioned by November.
make it so
Up Down Up Down Left Left Right Right Up Down
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Now I won't be selected to join the Navy.
You're laughing, but that 25k (nominally) pays for the following to not happen:
I have a 25 dollar Logitech joystick. For reasons I'll not go into, it's plugged into something that displays the nominal joystick position on a screen. Once every week or three, I come in to see the joystick sitting dead center but the position display showing it's full-tilt back and to the left because their the joystick, the USB controller it's plugged into, or the kernel module that talks to it hickuped. I nudge the stick with my carefully calibrated index finger and it rehomes itself and the display goes back to normal.
For what I'm doing, it's a nuisance that's to be expected with cheapo toys that use a plastic comb to interrupt an LED and two photodiodes to make an incremental encoder in the two axes. If it's got a million-dollar photonics mast plugged into it, I might spend some time and use multiply-redundant potentiometers with noise-immune readout circuits to give absolute positions. And I'd spend some time and energy doing all the engineering design, and testing, and etc etc to prove that the finished article won't hickup like that for the life of the device. It might cost my customer about 25k per unit to have that level of assurance.
Honestly, a periscope that captures all 360 degrees is the perfect situation to use a VR headset. Literally, all you are doing is looking around which is precisely what VR is suited for!
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The question is, will it shatter when the ship gets hit by a shock wave that does not kill the crew?
The controllers aren't indestructable but they're pretty good, (remember the old atari joysticks?)
As long they've got a spare or 2 in the original packaging stashed nearby, does it even matter?
I just find it more interesting that they're going with the older xbox 360 over the newer xbox one controllers.
"Once every week or three, I come in to see the joystick sitting dead center but the position display showing it's full-tilt back and to the left..."
It's because it keeps watching that JFK documentary.
Just wait until they can't find the pairing instructions
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
That's what the Steam Controllers are for.
Need the customization for that.
I discovered this when I tried switching from a mouse to an Xbox controller for gaming. With the mouse, you change its position and the direction of the camera changes appropriately. Once you've learned how much mouse motion corresponds to how much angular rotation, you can instantly move the camera from one one direction to another simply by moving the mouse to the appropriate spot on the desk. If you want to rapidly move the camera back and forth between two set directions, it's trivial because you're just moving the mouse between two fixed positions on the desk. You could do it blindfolded.
Not so for the thumbsticks on the XBox-style controller. It doesn't control the direction the camera is pointed. It controls the rate of change of the direction the camera is pointed. You have to push the thumbstick in the direction you want the camera to move, wait for the camera to almost get there, ease up on the thumbstick so the slew rate slows down, ease up some more, ease up some more, then let go when the camera is finally pointed in the desired direction. If you want to rapidly move the camera back and forth between two set directions, it's a lot of work each time, and you need to be watching the camera view to do it.
I emailed one of the developers working on drivers to allow you to use the controller in games which didn't support it, and learned why. The thumbsticks only have 256x256 resolution. That is, there are only 256 discrete measurable directions the stick can be pointing in each axis. This isn't enough resolution for precise aiming, so they have to use the gimpy slew-rate aiming.
For a camera limited to just one degree of motion like it sounds like this one is, you want to use a paddle controller. It's just a potentiometer. You rotate it and the camera rotates along with it. It too has a 1:1 correspondence between direction of the controller and direction of the camera. So you could rapidly move the camera back and forth between two set directions, blindfolded. In particular, if you put a raised ridge on the paddle wheel, the operator can know which direction the camera is pointed by feel, instead of having to read a numerical bearing readout. This is much more intuitive (the operator basically won't need any training) and less prone to error.
occurs due to a sticking A button.
"No good deed goes unpunished"
You have Trump in charge of the nuke button and you're worried about Microsoft controllers being an issue?
I'm calling bullshit on this one.
An off-the-shelf xbox controller is not marine-grade. Its components will corrode. There is no sensor validation or redundancy. It uses a cheap plastic housing that will crack if impacted.
It does not make sense to potentially entrust the lives of hundreds on a cheap plastic toy controller. There's simply too much at stake.
Perhaps some parts of the controller will be included in the military-designed final product, but literally buying a COTS controller and integrating it aboard? Bullshit.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
You can just "fix it in software" the same way you can fix a mouse with a post-it over the sensor in software: you can't.
Because in a few years, half the submarine force is going to be laid up with carpel tunnel and debilitating hand cramps.
Imagine all the people...
Yep, people are always asking why aviation software costs so much. It isn't the development cost it is the verification and validation cost. MCDC coverage (see link below) for the most stringent level of testing requires a lot of test development for each software module. This isn't even all the work. The company needs to define exactly what the software needs to do, preferably before the software is written, so that tests confirm the software is doing what it should do, not simply verifying the program does what the code says it should (we don't need to verify the compiler). All of the documentation costs a lot.
My preference has always been to test such a system by entering all equivalence classes of all inputs to the system and verify the appropriate outputs. However this seems to throw an additional wrench of cost and difficulty to properly define how all the system inputs connect to all the system outputs without getting badly mangled along the way (at least with a sufficiently complex system).
TLDR: Yeah, ensuring guaranteed operation of a piece of equipment costs a LOT.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
No way, an XBOX controller might work for those amateurs in the navy, but the Airforce master race will accept no substitute to keyboard and mouse.
The tech will feature both the $30 controller, as well as the $30 million control panel. There will be plenty spares for both, but more of the controller, as it's cheaper, smaller, and easily replaceable at nearly any port in the western world.
I've used more than one piece of military tech that featured a 360 controller as an interface, and have been responsible for it's continued use in theater. It's actually a pretty great idea from a military point of view. Consider maybe one or two guys are fully trained on the ZYX control panel and can effectively use the ZYX system. Damn near the whole of the lower enlisted already understands how a video-game controller works, so the odds of the ZYX system going down on account of a manpower issue issue are very small. Many are also already accustomed to operating a video game controller for long hours with no sleep and all the coffee you can drink.
Source: I was there, man.
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