The two engineers, Dr. Siegfried Dais and Prof. Dr. Uwe Kiencke have been presented the Eduard Rhein Foundation’s Technology Award 2008 for inventing and developing the CAN serial communication system. Beginning of the 1980’s both engineers were working with the Bosch Group. Originally developed for in-vehicle networking in passenger cars, CAN (controller area network) is nowadays used in all application fields, where a reliable, cost-effective, real-time communication is demanded. ”With its forward-looking design, this concept has established itself globally for technical data communication, similar to internet communication,” said Prof. Dr. Klaus Bender, who is one of the main-promoter of Profibus and Profinet, in his tribute at the award-giving ceremony at the Deutsches Museum in Munich.
Dr. Siegfried Dais is now the deputy chairman of the globally operating Bosch Group, and Prof. Dr. Uwe Kiencke is now a lecturer in industrial information technology at the University in Karlsruhe, following many years of work as a Bosch engineer. In 1985, Dais and Kiencke were the driving forces behind the filing of the pioneering concept of CAN as a patent, together with colleagues and associates. Later on, they used a good deal of management and license policy skill to promote it as a worldwide standard that is used in a wide range of technological applications.
The Eduard Rhein Foundation honors the convincing technological and economical achievements of the two Bosch engineers with its Technology Award 2008. Unnoticed by many people – even by many experts – the inner workings of technical products in virtually all sectors had undergone a technological revolution, the Foundation said. Microelectronics and microprocessor development in the 1970’s had not only given birth to the PC, but also to a far greater number of technical data controllers, which were mostly embedded in machines and their components. In addition, these controllers also determined the product functions in a growing number of devices and articles of daily use. It was obvious that these controllers had to be able to communicate with each other and with super-ordinate computers, just as PCs can. The CAN protocol was developed by Bosch specifically for data exchange between electronic control units, switches, sensors, and actuators in vehicles. Equally, CAN is also used in industrial micro-controller networks. For example, as a bus system that connects machine tools with the computers that control them, for data supply between measurement, control, and display functions, as well as for connecting sensors, actuators, and controls.
In motor vehicles, CAN replaces heavy and expensive wiring harnesses with a simple data-line. The Bosch engineers tailored the serial bus-system for automotive applications. On the one hand, it is essential for managing the increasing number of electronic functions in automobiles. On the other hand, it is scaled for the typical data quantities in automobiles and operates with the extremely high transmission reliability that is required for safety-relevant features such as the electronic anti-skid system ESP (electronic stability program). Since the introduction of the CAN-based ESP, many deadly accidences have been avoided. Governments consider to make ESP to a must.
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