Seems like someone at the US Nave had a great idea - from Stars & Stripes:
The Navy's most advanced submarines will soon be using Xbox controllers
The control room of the Navy's most advanced submarine is filled with sophisticated computers, flat-screen monitors and sailors who grew up in a digital world.
At times it can look a bit like a video game arcade, and not just because of the high-resolution graphics.
The Navy is beginning to use an Xbox 360 controller – like the ones you find at the mall – to operate the periscopes aboard Virginia-class submarines.
And its use?
Unlike other types of submarines people are familiar with from Hollywood, Virginia-class submarines don't have a traditional rotating tube periscope that only one person can look through at a time.
It's been replaced with two photonics masts that rotate 360 degrees. They feature high-resolution cameras whose images are displayed on large monitors that everyone in the control room can see. There's no barrel to peer through anymore; everything is controlled with a helicopter-style stick. But that stick isn't so popular.
So they replaced it with an Xbox controller - significantly easier to use and some cost savings too:
The Xbox controller is no different than the ones a lot of crew members grew up playing with. Lockheed Martin says the sailors who tested the controller at its lab were intuitively able to figure out how to use it on their own within minutes, compared to hours of training required for the joystick.
The Xbox controller also is significantly cheaper. The company says the photonic mast handgrip and imaging control panel that cost about $38,000 can now be replaced with an Xbox controller that typically costs less than $30.
From my own experience, Xbox controllers are used a lot in personal CNC machine equipment - MACH4 has an Xbox controller plugin and these are a lot cheaper than the custom built 'pendants' normally used. Win/Win
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