A CDNS KAOS is named on five axes: how it reaches the job, what it does once there, where a module's power comes from, where the power pack sits, and whether the cab has driving controls. Five choices, and not one of them is a number.
The machine is built in kinds, and a kind is a configuration. Five choices name one, and the record of those five choices is the product itself.
KAOS is one architecture, specified: neither a catalogue of separate machines nor a fixed model with a page of options after it. A configuration is named by five things together, each of them a decision with an engineering consequence attached.
Qualification is a property of a configuration. Change one element and it is a different configuration, and the released configuration record is what the machine is. Canadian Shield holds that discipline under the same word on the CDNS Autonomy line; the two are separate products. The line is on the CDNS KAOS page.
A common connection is what makes a one-off module affordable. Whoever builds one solves the job and never has to solve the coupling.
KAOS accepts standardized mission modules and it accepts custom kit, and both are true at once, because the standard is in the connection rather than the box. One mechanical, electrical, hydraulic, data and cooling connection is defined and controlled. What hangs off it is whatever the job wants.
One controlled connection, drawn once and the same on every machine. A module is a separable product: drawn, costed and made against a document, by a shop that has never seen the carrier.
That runs the opposite way to what a modular carrier usually offers. A standard box forces every job into a shape somebody else chose. A standard connection leaves the work's shape alone and takes the expensive part off the builder: the coupling, the power, the data and the safe-state handshake belong to the carrier.
A module can draw its auxiliaries from the carrier's generator, or carry a source of its own. The interface was drawn for both, and which one a module gets is specified with the job.
Anyone who has worked near a tractor knows the power take-off: a shaft turns, the implement drives off it, and its whole design is arranged around that shaft. KAOS is arranged around a generator, so what it hands a module is electrical power. A module needs no engine of its own, and can be lighter, simpler and cheaper than a self-powered unit. A shop that could never build a powertrain can build one.
A series hybrid makes electricity before it makes motion, so the deck connection is a branch of the same bus the tracks run on. What a tractor does with a shaft, KAOS does with a cable, and whoever builds the module never has to build a powertrain.
The second path runs the other way. A module can carry its own source and take nothing across the deck but structure, data, cooling and the safety handshake, and the interface is arranged for that as deliberately as for the first. Which path a module gets is specified per job. The generator behind it is on Power and energy.
Logistics, power, recovery and engineering are not a brochure's categories. They are the values the carrier reads out of a module before it feeds it.
The work axis is settled by the module, and the machine recognizes four kinds of it. Beneath the four sit the packages a configuration is ordered as: logistics mission pods, engineering high-flow implements, recovery and tow, mobile power, industrial response.
Mission pods and cargo on the deck, taken into ground where a road does not go and a person should not be. The load goes into the frame, not bodywork.
A machine arranged around a generator can sell power off its deck. Export is no accessory hung on the design; it is what the architecture already does, packaged per module.
Recovery and tow loads run into primary structure, bypassing service panels and bodywork. The load path is drawn before the panels around it.
Implements wanting flow and pressure rather than current alone, fed from the machine's own circuit through a valved and labelled panel, the tool setting the flow.
An interface is a set of rules rather than a set of numbers, and this is the whole of it: what the machine controls, and what a module brings to meet it.
Nine services cross the mission interface and nothing else does. The machine's side is fixed on a drawing; the module's side is an obligation on whoever builds it.
| Service | What the interface controls | What the module brings |
|---|---|---|
| Structure | A keyed hard-point grid, every point with a drawn coordinate and a load envelope. | A mounting that lands on the grid, with no cutting into the chassis. |
| High voltage | A dedicated protected branch. Nothing connects upstream, and module connectors join the interlock loop. | Its own contactor and fuse, ahead of all it powers. |
| Low voltage | A fused branch sized to the module, and a second rail where the build has one. | A declared running load, and the surge it draws at start-up. |
| Export | An alternating-current package specific to the module, earthed to the jurisdiction's scheme. | Distribution and protection on its own side of the outlet. |
| Hydraulics | Pressure, return and case drain, through a contamination-controlled flat-face coupler family. | Couplers of that family, and a circuit taken to zero before it is broken. |
| Ethernet | A managed connection through the machine's switch and gateway. | Traffic that stays inside the class it was given. |
| CAN | A controlled gateway, with ownership defined message by message. | Only the messages it owns. |
| Cooling | A low-temperature loop for module electronics, where one is needed. | Its own heat path if it does not take the loop. |
| Safety | A safe-state handshake: interlock, emergency-stop path, enable and fault. | A wired answer on all four, and a defined state when it stops. |
The mission interface, service by service.
What the deck survives under a loaded module — the twist between the track frames, the recovery loads, the module's own restraint — belongs to the structure, and is on The machine.
An interface is defined as much by what it refuses as by what it carries, and each refusal here is a property of the machine rather than a setting on it.
A mission module is a stranger bolted to a work machine, and the interface treats it as one. Each of these is enforced in wiring and architecture, at the boundary.
Most say one thing in different wiring: a payload can ask the machine for work and can never take authority. The stop, the brake and the order behind that are on Command and safety.
Every module carries an electronic identity. The carrier reads it before it hands over energy, oil or a working mode, and what it reads changes how the machine behaves.
The identity is a required minimum and it is specific: the module type, its serial, its hardware revision, its mass and centre of gravity as it stands, the speed cap it imposes, and its hydraulic and electrical limits including export. A module that cannot answer is one the machine will not feed.
It is more than a passport. A module does not only take limits from the carrier, it sets them: identity alters the speed, the acceleration, the grade and the tool functions allowed. Behind that sits one configuration record per machine — the as-built parts list, the software revision, the calibration set and a checksum, against the serial.
Three-axis centre of gravity installed, and at the consumable minimum and maximum. A tank that empties is a different machine, and the interface asks before the module goes on.
Every module is checked against the machine's sensor field of view and occlusion solids before its configuration is released. A module that hides what the machine must see is a configuration problem, never an operator's.
A module is released against a mass and centre-of-gravity envelope, and every hard point carries one of its own. That beats a figure painted on a deck.
Changing what a machine is for is a deck operation. The deck lowers, the container rolls off along its rails, and the deck returns for the next.
The deck tilts and lowers to meet the ground, the module runs off along the rails, and the deck comes back level. It is a motion of the carrier itself. What follows once a module is aboard matters more, and it is a sequence: fitted, read, checked, tested and released.
Deck stowed, arm folded — the machine in travel position
The sequence is the same for a module made in a series and for one made once, and no step is dropped because it looks familiar.
Fitting a module is one controlled sequence, and the order inside it is deliberate. The low-energy connections are made and answered before anything dangerous is joined, and a module says what it is before it gets power or oil.
Installed mechanically and tightened against the drawing, by the method it names.
Low voltage and the network come up first. Hydraulics and high voltage follow, under a released procedure.
The machine reads the identity and verifies that module and carrier belong together.
Mass, the centre-of-gravity configuration and the load limits, against what identity declared.
The input, output and interlock tests, so the safe-state handshake answers before the module acts.
The sensor-coverage configuration for this module, so the machine knows what it hides.
The module's own functional test, on the module's own terms.
The configuration record is released for operation, and it is what the machine is until it changes.
Track frames, power plant, cab and deck interface are the same units at three scales, so three machines run on one parts inventory.
KAOS is a family of three sizes — KAOS Light, KAOS Core and KAOS Heavy — and the assemblies interchange across all three. That is the point of the line rather than a convenience inside it. A fleet holds one set of spares instead of three. A shop that makes one assembly serves the line. A running gear damaged on a Heavy is fixed from a Light's shelf. The arrangements here are Core's, and so is CS-270.
A shelf of assemblies is only an argument if somebody can make them, and the make-and-buy line says who. Canadian Shield designs and owns the structure, the mission deck and its hard points, the recovery load paths, the high-voltage distribution, the battery installation, the harnesses, the controls, the safety logic, the software and the integration behind all of it. Engine, battery, motors, inverters, final drives, pumps, valves and undercarriage wear parts are bought in. Canadian-designed, Canadian-integrated, Canadian-supported: design authority and configuration control are what a sovereign operator keeps. Sovereignty and Manufacturing carry it in full.
An interface defines both sides of the boundary it sits on. So both halves below are specific: who names a configuration, and what this deck is not there for.
The conversation starts with the ground you have to work, the job the machine does there, and the module you have in mind.
Bring the ground, the work and the module: its mass, and its centre of gravity in every state a consumable puts it in. Every enquiry is screened; supply is subject to Canadian export permits issued per shipment, and export posture is counsel-first.
The line as a whole is on the CDNS KAOS page. The structure under this deck is on The machine, the generator behind the interface on Power and energy, the stop and the order of authority on Command and safety. The buyer's door is Who it is for.
Nothing on this page is an offer or a commitment. Patent pending. Designations are current as issued and subject to change. International transfer is subject to Canadian government permits taken per shipment; export posture is counsel-first.
