Safe communication in mobile machines
- Safety-relevant communication occurs in mobile machinery with human interaction such as in the above refuse collection vehicle
By Dr. Rolf Jung (STW Sensor-Technik Wiedemann)
Source: CAN Newsletter March 2008
Increasing requirements have caused more control units to be used in each working machine. In the past few years the vehicle wiring harness has grown tremendously and actuators, sensors and electronic control units have become interconnected. In the automotive sector CAN technology has achieved widespread acceptance.
As a manufacturer of freely programmable controlling units with CAN, STW (www.sensor-technik.de) is working on a large number of diverse applications. Example applications are mobile cranes, fork lifts and refuse collection vehicles. Over the past years users of these applications have increasingly requested functional safety. This trend requires higher hardware performance and also structured software. The integration density of micro-controllers has increased not only to accomplish specified functions of controlling units in an economically acceptable framework but also for the additionally required features of functional safety.
In safety-relevant applications control units with functional safety features diminish the risk of serious accidents or considerably reduce the loss.
