Cybernetics is the study of communication and control systems in living things and machines. A scientist specializing in cybernetics might study human-robot interaction.
The term cybernetics was coined in the 1940s by scientist Norbert Wiener, and he defined it as "the scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the machine." The word has come to be used in slightly different ways since then, including the study of robots, cyborgs, and prosthetics. The popular technological prefix cyber- actually came after the word cybernetics, which is rooted in the Greek kybernetes, "steersman, guide or governor."