MilCAN in the Terrier armored combat vehicle

CAN Newsletter September 2006

BAE Systems has developed an air-transportable armored combat vehicle Terrier for the Royal Engineers of the UK MOD with the CAN-based higher-layer protocol MilCAN. The vehicle performs a variety of roles for the armed forces from trench-digging and earth-moving to mine clearance. It can also be operated remotely in hazardous environments. The vetronics on-board improve crew safety through an automated assisted digging function to prevent operator fatigue. The vetronics elements integrated in the vehicle are driver and commander crewstations, bowman, intelligent power management system, crew hand-controller joysticks, TV and IR sensors, special-to-role and drive-by-wire controllers, and engine management unit. The latter elements enable the remote control operation of the vehicle. The relatively high bus loading from real-time drive-by-wire functions are segregated from high level command and control data by the use of separate but linked dual-redundant MilCAN buses. These bus segments serve to minimize data loading and restrict fault propagation. The power management system is also based on dual redundant MilCAN data lines that are separately routed to minimize errors.