According to CAN in Automation (CiA), more than one billion CAN controllers were sold in 2016.
“CAN is the most successful industrial bus system,” said Holger Zeltwanger, CiA managing director. “With the already internationally standardized CAN FD protocol extension the lifecycle will be prolonged by one or two decades.”
The CANopen application layer maintained since 1994 by CiA has been established in many markets. With about 20,000 pages of profile specification, some of the CANopen technical communication systems are internationally standardized like the CiA 402 drive profile in IEC 61700-8/201/301. These standardized profiles help achieve interoperability between products from different vendors.
In the year of its 25th anniversary, CiA organizes the 16th international CAN conference in Nuremberg, Germany, the hometown of the nonprofit association. Besides this event, it has scheduled several seminars for newcomers and some CAN 2020 webinars introducing CAN FD technology.
“When I initiated the CiA organization in 1992,” said Zeltwanger, “I was not aware that this would lead to a longtime association with 15 employees in 2017.” With more than 600 membership fee paying members the association is very active in international standardization representing also small and medium-sized companies.
