The Controller Area Network (CAN) protocol celebrated its 25th anniversary this year. In the early 80s, Bosch engineers invented one of the most robust and reliable communication systems. Originally, they had not intended CAN networks for use in other than automotive applications. 

About 20 years ago, some engineers (including me) from non-automotive industries had the dream to use CAN in a standardized manner in industrial embedded control systems. We established the nonprofit CAN in Automation (CiA) Users and Manufacturers Group. Since then, CAN has found its way into many application fields and is now well established - it is sometimes even the market-leading communication technology.  

Of course, non-automotive users benefit from the high volume of CAN controllers used by carmakers. There are more than 800 million CAN interfaces installed per year. And this will increase even more in the coming years: in 2015, CiA expects sales of about 2 billion CAN chips.

Robustness and reliability is just half of the story. Designers of embedded networks also require devices to be flexible and interoperable. This is why CiA members have developed the CANopen application layer, as well as several device and application profiles. It was their dream to standardize higher-layer protocols and profiles based on CAN to make this communication technology suitable for medium- and low-volume applications. This dream has become reality: more than 800 CANopen vendor-IDs have been assigned and companies have developed a wide spectrum of available CANopen devices.

CANopen networks are used not only in machine control systems, but also in medical devices, off-road and off-highway vehicles, in laboratory automation, rail vehicles, and in many other industrial applications where more than two micro-controller based devices need to communicate. Some of these industries have only just started to use this communication technology. And there are more requests for standardized CANopen profiles coming (e.g. energy management systems, on-board weighing systems).

We have still a lot of dreams: we want to make CAN faster and we want to introduce partial networking (i.e.  single nodes can sleep and awake individually). We will realize those dreams in the near future. Yes, we CAN! If you want to learn more, visit the 13th international CAN Conference in Hambach Castle in March 2012 - a Janz-sponsored event.