Connecting engineers to their CAN data in every industry

The aerospace industry was relatively quick to recognise the controller area network’s (CAN’s) reliability.

ISO 11783 defines a communication protocol for the operation and control of agricultural implements and is based on the SAE J1939 protocol, which in turn is based on CAN bus.

The Controller Area Network (CAN) protocol was developed for the automotive industry and has since found widespread application elsewhere.

Modern buses and trucks incorporate electronic modules, microcontrollers, devices, actuators and sensors to facilitate their efficient control and operation.

With a dominance of Lithium Ion (Li-Ion) batteries in most energy storage applications, BMS have become the critical enabler, from both a functionality and safety perspective.

As with civilian vehicles of all types, CAN is pervasive throughout military transportation.

Electric vehicles (EVs) are a fast-growing part of the automotive market. Bosch expects that 85 to 90 million cars will be produced worldwide in 2015.

The industrial automation / control sector has a long history with CAN. Indeed, some of the first users of CAN were not from the automotive industry at all, but from the textile machine manufacturing sector.

From small pleasure boats and tugs, to cruise ships, icebreakers and oil rigs, CAN has long been viewed as the communications protocol of choice for many marine electronics systems.

Philips Medical Systems was one of the first medical device manufacturers, if not the first, to decide to use CAN for the internal networking of their X-ray machines.

Mining environments offer performance challenges to electrical systems, in addition to the requirement of extreme safety and reliability – an ideal use of CAN bus.

Today, CAN and CANopen solutions run on a wide variety of trains such as locomotives, coaches, urban/regional/international trains, high-speed trains, trams, monorails and metros, etc.

As the most widely used bus architecture in automotive design, the Controller Area Network (CAN) is suited to any control system where a network architecture is needed.

From solar cars to solar fields, via solar powered telescopes, CAN (Controller Area Network) has been chosen as the communications protocol of choice in a number of solar systems.