Navy abandoning virtual touch screen control for ships

Navy scrapping touchscreen controls on destroyers after deadly collisions: report https://www.foxnews.com/tech/navy-ditches-touchscreen-controls

Its the wrong application of technology to control a boat, they are going back to physical controls.
Which makes a lot of sense! People have hands, arms, feet, and need to interact bodily to control things in a natural world with things like levers, switches, hand and foot controls, its the way we are hardwired.

People died in collisions blamed on touchscreens.

 

Also here..
US Navy to ditch touch screen ship controls https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49319450

Why am I not surprised after spending the last 20 years of my career fighting this issue.

Edit: auto correct won again

 

This is excellent news.

I was very nervous they would not realize systemic problems with the design.

Plenty of human blame was fair, but apparent problems do not manifest quickly on touch screen controls.

I thought I steered the ship is a horrible sensation.

 

There are lots of situations where a integrated touchscreen concept works...synthetic switchboards is prime example. But for situations where differential control is needed not so much. I had long heated argument about this back in 98-99 with a systems developer. Why did an operator need to make 12 separate touches to a screen (all of which had to be correct and on target) in a crisis situation, when he could just adjust a knob? I was eventually told not to bother the contractor... by the time the system was delivered the touchscreen hardware it was developed for was obsolete. <sigh>.

 

My wife wanted to argue about touchscreens with me on this subject (of which I am a google dunning kroger exceptional genius), but there was no way she could convince me she had the helm.

 

Lets go full AI control of all shipping. Coming to cars first.
No need for crew anymore. All ships to be virtually controlled when needed by satellite controls.
Of course coming into ports and tying up might be more of a challenge.

 

Meh...the military I experienced makes terrible decisions, so it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't fubar the installations / programming / whatever making them total pieces of trash. The military does some things right, but they can fubar things beyond all human recognition, too.

 

My cousin had too much when they gave him a new bomber jacket with a pen holder on the shoulder, followed by a memo banning the use of the pen holder. He hung up his wings.

 

Being retired military, seen this happen far too many times. What really drives it is ego. Someone makes a "brilliant proposal". Senior command buys into it and spends lot of money developing and implementing it. Doesn't matter how many tell them it won't work. In fact the naysayers often get punished for being right. But, when it turns out to be a dismal failure they have too much invested in it (ego wise) to admit it is a failure and so keep steaming all ahead full until something bad happens. Then the finger pointing starts. Usually it doesn't result in accidents like these but what a waste of money, time and effort.

Anyway, sorry, rant for the day.

Just ask any old sailor, Coast Guard or Navy, that wore the old crackerjack uniform. Three pockets, one tiny one on the blouse, two on the pants. The only thing you were allowed to put in the blouse pocket was your ID card. The two on the pants were too small and tight to put anything in and you weren't allowed to anyway. So where did you put things like your wallet, cigarettes, etc. In your socks.

 

Wholly concur with analog vs touch screen controls for vessels. Salt water vs. electronics. Salt water wins every time.

 

Actually, the portion of the USN I did engineering for has gotten pretty good at it. Look at the stuff we do for the subs, SEALs, and the trickle down into modern dive hardware. COTS stuff on the skimmers?..ahhh...not so good. Some program sponsors really need to understand the differences between "marine environment", "weather tight", "splash tight", "splash proof", "water tight", "water proof", "pressure tight" and "pressure proof". Lots of smoke, mirrors, and snake oil.