Comments on: Army fly UAV Spy Plane with Xbox 360 Controller

By: The Long Dog, Web, digital and communications blather » Blog Archive » Usability - a matter of life and death

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 22:14:33 +0000

[...] @fulnic also tells me that this handset interface is also being use in unmanned spy planes. [...]

By: Free Xbox 360

Free Xbox 360 — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:20:59 +0000

With the age of the guys and gals entering these conflicts, they will have grown up using these console controllers, and will simply be more dextrous, more quickly than they would be with any other controller that the milliatary could supply them I think it’s a simple response, and for once, shows a bit of common sense.

By: VA Loan Desk

VA Loan Desk — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:06:14 +0000

I would say the military budget probably provides for a much better controller than one from and XBox 360. It is awesome to see some of our technological capabilities!

By: Jaswinder

Jaswinder — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 10:30:14 +0000

I think these remote control spy planes
are great because they save lot of soldiers.I wish that i could fly them.

By: anon

anon — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 18:37:50 +0000

as a serving soldier attached to the uav team i can say that it is an adapted 360 controler, it is used due to the ergonomic shape and adaptability

By: Mahdad

Mahdad — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 10:14:13 +0000

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By: Justin Conboy

Justin Conboy — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 10:03:42 +0000

Excellent work by the way. I’ve wanted to know about this for a while but never did anything about it. I’m in Ireland and I’ve seen this ad on some of the British channels over here. I noticed the Xbox 360 controller straight away. My girlfriend was sitting beside me and didn’t have a clue what I was talking about until I picked up my own controller and pointed it out to here on the ad. I was also watching “Future Weapons with Mack” on Discovery Channel. They had an unmanned equipment carrier which was called a Mule. It was remotely controlled and used an xbox 360 wired controller, which was wired into a large transmitter for remote control purposes. On the close-up of the xbox controller on this show, it definitely had the silver and green xbox button on it. The xbox controller in the army ad above looks, to me, like is also has the xbox silver and green button in the centre. My point about my girlfriend not noticing is because I feel this ad is designed directly to influence young MEN as they play video games by 20:1 probably. I also notice there are no women in that group of people at all. I’m not to sure about how I feel about recruiting young boys like this…. I’ll have to think about it some more!!!

By: Alex Buell

Alex Buell — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 07:56:39 +0000

Wouldn’t it be a lot easier just to drill a hole in the soldiers’ brains and plug ‘em in… a la the Matrix?

By: Paul Maunders | Web log » Blog Archive » Army use Xbox-like controller to fly Desert Hawk 3 UAV

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 19:02:31 +0000

[...] I received a reply from the Army Recruiting and Training Division. You can see my original post for the full response, but in summary it confirmed the following [...]

By: Paul Maunders

Paul Maunders — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 18:47:23 +0000

So as you can see from the update I have made to this post, the Army have now replied to me and clarified that although the controller used by them to fly the plane is very similar to an Xbox 360 controller, it is not quite the same, but it is the real controller that you see in the advert.