What Is Cybernetics?
Cybernetics is a comprehensive science field, where research is conducted on theoretical topics fusing communications engineering and control engineering, applicable to both machines and living things.
It was proposed in 1948 by Norbert Wiener, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US. Observing the behavior of birds that migrate with the seasons, Wiener noted that their coming to the same places each year suggests they are equipped with the ability to travel while gathering information about their surroundings and making repeated course corrections. He announced this in a paper, “Control and Communication.” The theory of cybernetics laid out in this paper had a strong impact on the world.
Machines bear a similarity to this, in that they are controlled based on information obtained through communication with their surroundings. Thereafter, cybernetics came to be incorporated as a new research topic in academic fields covering an extensive range of areas, from living things in the natural world and artificially created machines to even such areas as psychology and economics.
Today, as a result of applying computer-based communications and control technologies, cybernetics has developed into a highly important technology closely linking humans and machines, in such areas as information systems and robot control.
The origin of the word cybernetics, incidentally, is the Greek word Κυβερνήτης (kybernetes). The meanings of the original word include “pilot, steersman, governor, leader”; and from the concept of “manipulate” or “control” came the word “cybernetics” (Kybernetik in Germany), meaning system control functions. The familiar terms “cyber” and “cyborg” also come from cybernetics.
Adoption in Company Name
When the company was launched in 1969, the founder Toshio Takamisawa decided that cybernetics most closely matched his vision for the future of the company, and proposed “artificial brain machine=cybernetics,” leading to its adoption in the company name.
“Technology is truly technology when it is used by many people, not just a few specialists. As a manufacturer specializing in technical innovation, dedicate ourselves to the art of manufacturing (monozukuri). Create a society full of vitality, essential to the world.” These policies of founder Toshio Takamisawa continue to guide our company today, as the starting point of our creation of Human Technology—aiming for development of technologies attuned to human needs.