The complex connection between man and machine is the domain of modern industrial control, otherwise known as the science of how to communicate with machines—home of the man-machine interface challenge.
Machine communication input devices are ubiquitous: toggle switches, rotary switches, thumbwheels, slider and rotary potentiometers; simple navigation joysticks, and potentiometer-based joysticks. Buzzers, bells, lights and sounders help us monitor machines with our eyes and ears.
Security has also emerged as a top industrial control design theme. It's a topic that inspired NIST's Guide to Industrial Control Systems Security, a how-to guide to securing industrial control systems. It covers supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, distributed control systems (DCS), and other control system configurations such as programmable logic controllers (PLC).