A tracked work platform standing in churned mud and standing water, a container tilted off the back of its deck on a lifting arm, dark spruce and snow-covered mountains behind.
CDNS KAOS · The Machines

One Architecture. Three Sizes.
One Set of Assemblies.

CDNS KAOS is a Canadian-built, heavy-duty, diesel-electric tracked work platform that takes standardized mission modules and goes into ground a person should not be standing on. The engine charges and the motors drive, the running gear bolts off in one piece, and the deck powers whatever is fitted to it. This is the line's front door: what the machine is, how a configuration is named, and who it is for.

The machine → Command and safety Start a screened enquiry
The platform

A Work Platform Sized to the Job.
The Module on the Deck Decides It.

KAOS is a tracked carrier drawn around a deck. What it is for on a given day is settled by what is bolted to that deck, and by where the person working it is standing.

KAOS is Canadian Shield's ground platform, and the work is what the design is drawn around: lifting and carrying, towing and recovery, powering a site from the deck, and going onto ground a person should be kept off.

Human safety comes first, on every line, and on this one the answer is where the person is put. The work this platform exists for is done with the operator off the machine and clear of the ground, at a station joined to it by an optical fibre. What the machine does that day is decided by the module on its deck. What it can do at all is decided by an architecture common to three sizes and assembled from parts that bolt on and bolt off. Who the line answers, and what a first conversation needs, is on Who It Is For.

The platform from the front left on a plain ground: two tracks under a low welded hull, the power module standing ahead of a long open deck, and a folded crane at the tail.
Built in, not fitted

An Operator You Drop In.
Or a Machine That Never Needed One.

There are two ways to take a person off a machine, and the group offers both. They are separate products answering separate problems.

CDNS Autonomy is a removable operator. It sits on the seat of a machine the customer already owns, works that machine's own controls, and lifts out again. The fleet is the asset, and the unit is what changes.

KAOS is the other case. The machine is drawn around the absence of a driver, not adapted to it afterwards: the structure, the energy path, the command path and the safety chain are laid out for a machine worked from off board. The platform is built to be autonomous rather than fitted with it, and a person commands it from a station that is not on it. Where the customer's own iron is the thing to keep, the removable operator is the answer. Where the ground is the problem, a machine drawn for it is.

The family

Three Sizes of One Design.
The Assemblies Fit All Three.

KAOS Light, KAOS Core and KAOS Heavy are three sizes of the same architecture. Core carries the designation CS-270, and every arrangement described on this line is Core's.

Three sizes exist because a deck, a footprint and a mass have to suit the job. They are not three designs: the assemblies behind them are the same units at three scales.

KAOS LIGHT

The small size in the family

The same bolted assemblies, the same deck interface and the same command path, at the smallest of the three.

KAOS CORE

The size the design is drawn to

Core is where the engineering sits. The hull, the running-gear cartridges, the power module and the deck interface are all drawn at this size.

KAOS HEAVY

The large size in the family

The architecture again at the top of the range, taking the same cartridges, the same power module and the same deck grid.

Track frames, power module, cab and deck interface are common units fitted at three scales, and that is the point of building a line this way. One inventory of assemblies covers the family. A fleet holds one set of spares instead of three. A damaged running gear on a Heavy comes off a shelf that also serves a Light. And a shop that can make one assembly supplies the line without ever making a whole machine, which is the shape manufacturing takes on this side of the enterprise.

Hybrid diesel-electric

A Road Truck's Drivetrain,
Taken Off the Road.

KAOS is a series hybrid: diesel-electric, battery-buffered. The engine turns a generator, the generator charges a battery and feeds one bus, and electric motors turn the tracks. Nothing mechanical runs from the engine to the ground, and the whole machine is drawn around that.

The engine has one job, which is to make electricity, so it can be held at the speed it burns fuel best while the ground does what it likes. The battery has the other job: it takes the surge when a track bites and gives it back when the load falls away, so the engine sees a flat demand where the ground makes a jagged one. A motor on each side turns the tracks, each side commanded on its own, and the machine steers by driving one track harder than the other.

Off the road the arrangement earns more than it does on it. The duty is peaky, the ambient is cold, and much of the machine's life is spent with its tracks stopped, running a tool or sending power off the deck — the case a mechanical spine handles worst.

THE ENGINE

It makes electricity, and nothing else

A diesel prime mover turning a generator, sized for what an hour of work asks rather than for its hardest second, and run where it burns fuel best.

THE BATTERY

A buffer, not the fuel

It takes the peaks and returns the surplus, lets the machine creep or sit and watch with the engine off, and moves it clear if the generator cannot.

THE MOTORS

One on each side, commanded apart

Electric drive at each track, each side's torque a value a controller sets. Nothing mechanical crosses between the two sides.

THE PACK

Above the deck, or in the tub

Engine, generator, battery, hydraulics and electronics travel as one bolt-in unit, offered behind the cab or between the track frames. In the tub, only the cab stands above the frame line: the whole deck is payload and the mass is as low as it will go.

The carrier in side elevation with the chassis open to view: the electric driveline and its shafting running the length of the machine, the road-wheel train and track below, and the flat deck above.
A detail of the hull between the track frames: a row of mesh vents and hinged access panels along the tub, the deck edge with its tie-down rings above, and the track and road wheels below.

The same generator is what the deck hands to a module and what the machine hands to a site once it is parked. Power off the deck is not an accessory bolted to this design; it is what the architecture already does. The bus, the buffer, the high-voltage discipline and the two arrangements of the pack are on Power and Energy.

The structure

One Welded Box.
Everything Else Bolts to It.

The tub between the tracks is the machine. The running gear, the power module and the deck interface are bolted assemblies, and a damaged one comes off on the ground rather than in a shop.

A single welded steel tub runs the length of the machine between the tracks. That tub is the structure, not a rail with a body dropped on it. It ties the two running-gear cartridges together against the twist between them, carries the deck and whatever the customer puts on it, and takes the recovery loads into its own longitudinal members. The battery bays are cut into the low centre, so the heaviest single mass sits low and central, protected by the structure instead of hung underneath it.

Each side's running gear is one complete cartridge — frame, rollers, idler, tensioner, chain, shoes and the drive at the back — landing on a machined, indexed face. Three rules govern that joint.

The hull, what it has to answer for, and how a structure like it is built and released are on The Machine.

Command

A Person Commands It.
The Path Is Glass, Not Air.

The command path runs from a station that is not on the machine, over an optical fibre from a stand-off position. Nothing on that path goes over the air.

A fibre is a wire, with nothing on it to jam, and it is the path the group's own removable operator already works on. The machine can be handed a bounded task to carry out while the person watches, and the part of the machine that plans the work reaches neither the torque nor the brakes. Stops are physical units on the machine itself, and the safe state is not a message the machine has to receive: lose control power and the brakes close on their own springs.

Control type is a configuration rather than a fixed property. One cab has a wheel and pedals, for transit, yard work and any job where a person drives it. The other has a seat and no driving controls, for the work where the machine drives itself and a person only rides.

Doctrine
AI plans. Rules govern. Humans authorize. Safety has veto.

Independent safety can only take authority away, and it does so without asking the software. Nobody in harm's way, on any ground, whoever would have been standing on it.

The authority order, the stop, the brake and the tether are set out in full on Command and Safety, and they are described nowhere else on this line.

The carrier standing in wet, cut-up ground with a Goose launch module chained on its deck — the tube bank, the pressure vessels and the control cabinet under the Canadian Shield mark — dark conifers and snow peaks behind.
The configuration

One Machine.
Five Choices That Name It.

A KAOS configuration is named by five things, and not one of them is a measurement. Settle the five and you have specified a machine instead of picking one off a shelf.

The deck is a keyed grid of hard points, and what crosses it is a document: structure, high-voltage and low-voltage power, hydraulics, network, cooling and a safe-state handshake. A tractor hands an implement a power take-off — a spinning shaft at one speed the implement has to be built around. KAOS hands a module electrical power from a generator instead, so a module need not carry an engine of its own. It can be lighter and simpler than a self-powered unit, and a shop can build one without building a powertrain. A module may still bring its own power where the job wants it, because the standardization is in the connection and not in the box.

The axisThe choiceWhat it settles
TransportHow the machine reaches the job, is carried, set down and set upLifting and tie-down points, forklift pockets, and what comes off for the move
WorkWhat it does once it is there, from the four kinds it recognizesThe module on the deck, and the limits the machine adopts with it
Power pathWhether the module draws its auxiliaries from the carrier or brings its ownWhat the module has to carry, and what its builder can leave out
Deck arrangementWhether the power pack stands above the deck or sits between the track framesWhere the heavy mass sits, and how the deck is laid out around it
Control typeWhether the cab has driving controls or a seat and noneWho drives it, and what it is asked to do on its own

The five axes a KAOS configuration is named by.

Four module families cross the deck: logistics, power, recovery and engineering. The machine reads which one is on it before it will feed it anything. What crosses the interface, what never does, and what a module has to declare about itself are on Configurations and the Deck.

Who it is for

Where This Line Answers a Problem.
And Where It Does Not.

What the line refuses sits beside what it does. Both lists are short, and both come out of the design rather than a policy.

WHO IT IS FOR

Ground you would rather not crew

  • An operator with ground that has to be worked and a good reason to keep a person off it: contaminated, unstable, remote or too dangerous to crew.
  • A fleet that would rather hold one set of assemblies than three, and would rather change a running gear on the ground than send a machine away for a rebuild.
  • A buyer whose job no catalogue machine is shaped for, and who wants the work decided by the module rather than the carrier under it.
  • A site that needs electrical power where it is working, off the deck of the machine that drove itself there.
  • An engineering group that wants the interface, its refusals and its commissioning sequence in writing before anything is bolted on.
WHAT IT IS NOT

Read this before the enquiry

  • Not a removable operator. CDNS Autonomy fits machines a customer already owns; this is a machine drawn around the absence of a driver.
  • Not a wireless system. The command path is an optical fibre from a stand-off station, and nothing on that path goes over the air.
  • Not a module catalogue. The machine standardizes the connection, and the module itself is specified per job.
  • Not three unrelated machines. Light, Core and Heavy are three sizes of one architecture, and Core carries the only designation issued.
  • Not an offer. Every enquiry is screened; international transfer is subject to Canadian government permits issued per shipment, and counsel comes first.

The buyer's door and what a first conversation needs from you are on Who It Is For.

The conversation

The Deck Decides the Machine.
The Ground Decides How It Gets There.

Bring the work, the ground it sits on and the way the machine has to reach it. Enquiries are screened before any discussion, and nothing on this page is an offer.

The pages under this one carry the line in full. The hull, what it has to answer for and how a structure like it is released are on The Machine. The series drivetrain and everything hanging off the bus are on Power and Energy. Who commands the machine, over what, and what stops it are on Command and Safety, which the other pages defer to. The five module axes and what bolts to the deck are on Configurations, and the transport axis — the fifth wheel, and a tracked tractor drawing a trailer — is on Convoy. The carrier configured for mechanical land clearance is on Mine Clearance. Who the line is for is on Who It Is For. What the company designs, owns and keeps control of is on Sovereignty, which sits above every line.

Write with the ground, the work and the module you have in mind, and say how the machine would have to reach it. Every enquiry is screened before any discussion; international transfer is subject to Canadian government permits issued per shipment, and export posture is counsel-first. The reply comes in writing, from a person.

Start a screened enquiry → Contact Canadian Shield Government and ministries