Ukraine's army is experimenting with using Steam Decks to remote-control gun turrets (2023)
6 points by stilic
6 points by stilic
Recently Tom Scott visited a Airbus facility where they were working on mars rovers he was handed a Steam Deck to drive it: https://youtu.be/IJSO-BL3pEU?t=832 (link to a timestamp, but the whole video is good)
This is such a weird article and I'm left with so many questions.
"Steam Deck is pretty perfect when you think about it," Toler told PC Gamer. "Totally native OS client, great controller you can use, touch screen, etc.
Any modern PC can get a touchscreen and great controller. Game controllers are amazing because they've been refined by millions of people for targeting - military likely couldn't do that much testing for years. But there are so many better implementations - hall effect sensors and more durable sticks being the main things. Why go with steamdeck when you can get a bunch of decent controllers perfectly supported my normal PC? Especially when you need to put the steamdeck on WiFi! Or do they need easily portable platform when they move to another location?
It makes perfect sense for Steam Deck to be used, assuming the software is Linux-compatible
Wine is part of the steamdeck magic - they could use it too.
$399 for a base model Steam Deck isn't cheap
Yeah, that's basically nothing compared to miliary consulting.
I don't feel like the author was too familiar with either steamdecks or military devices. I would love to hear the details of how this choice was actually made.
First you have to set up a turret, I don't think you'd want to also set up a PC with a controller. If it were me, I'd definitely want an ergonomic, repairable, consumer level, one piece solution.
I don't imagine they're using WiFi, the drone warfare in the area has famously all been over fibre optic. You can see the Steam Deck is plugged in via a USB-C cable.
Ah, I made some assumptions that are probably incorrect. I thought the operator is far away in a semi-permanent location rather than close to the deployed turret. But watching the full video again that's not the case. Yeah, the choice makes way more sense now!