Was OceanGate's Titan submersible driven by videogame controller?

It has been over three days since the missing tourist submersible Titan Five with five very influential people onboard lost communication with the outer world just an hour into its dive into the ocean above the shipwreck of the unfortunate Titanic, on Sunday. 

The whole world is looking for them without any success and they are theoretically left with no oxygen supply.

The Titan has five people on board including a pilot, and as the details about the vessel started to surface, it was also revealed that the OceanGate-owned Titanic expedition vessel was controlled by a video game controller.

The revelation has sparked concerns about the hardware of the missing submersible.

While CBS News took a trip back in 2022 inside OceanGate's one-of-a-kind carbon-fibre submersible, the CEO Stockton Rush said — who is among the crew — while holding a device in his hands: "We run the whole thing with this game controller."

It remains unclear about the customisation or modification of the controller and it also remains unknown whether the company was using the video game controller on the submersible for its recent tourism.

Steve Wright, an associate professor of aerospace engineering at the University of the West of England, said "several aircraft and sea vessels are partially controlled by what looks like a video game controller."

Wright, who worked with both manned and unmanned aircraft, noted that similar devices are used in both.

But the devices he described are a bit more advanced than your average PlayStation controller.

"Avionics is used all over the place, not just flying things," referring to a drone his students were working on, "to the extent that the software we're 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.

According to OceanGate’s statement, it was "exploring and mobilising all options to bring the crew back safely."

The Coast Guard also launched a search and rescue mission for the vessel as they were intimated.

When shown a photo of the Titan's video game controller via email, Wright said he's "never seen anything like that," and expected there would have been a more reliable main system.

Wright said it would not be 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," he wrote.

Wright said the joysticks that help steer various aircraft and vessels are "fundamentally the same" as those on video game controllers.

"Mainly, you're not controlling the propulsion system and the thruster system of your airborne vehicle or your submersible vehicle or even your land vehicle," he said.

"You're doing what airliners and fighter jets have been doing for decades and that is, you're just making suggestions to a computer."

But the so-called "video game controller" isn't the only system that helps drive submersibles or aircraft, he said.

There is often a backup controller in case one breaks and many of the functions of aircraft or submersibles are controlled by a computer, not the operator of the joystick.

“People who are good at video games could probably figure out how to use such joysticks, but if things go wrong, knowledge of the computer systems would be needed.”

"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 stated.