KAOS Core CS-270 carries a diesel engine that never turns a track. It turns a generator, the generator feeds one high-voltage bus, and an electric motor on each side drives the tracks. Below is that arrangement: what it buys a machine that works for a living, what it costs, and what else the same bus is asked to feed.
Most heavy tracked machines are built around a mechanical spine. This one is built the other way round, and the rest of the page follows from that choice.
A conventional tracked machine turns a shaft that drives the tracks through a pump or a gearbox. Every load hangs off it, so the engine must cover the worst instant the machine will ever meet, and it spends its life away from the speed at which it burns fuel best.
CDNS KAOS is arranged the other way round. The diesel engine does not drive the tracks at all: no driveshaft, no torque converter, no hydrostatic pump between the engine and the ground. Its one job is to turn a generator, and what the generator makes goes onto one high-voltage bus. Everything on the machine draws from that bus, the battery included, and there is no mechanical path from the engine to the ground.
Three things follow. The engine is sized for the work an hour contains rather than the hardest second inside it. It runs where it burns fuel best instead of chasing the load. And each track is driven on its own. The costs belong in the same breath: more conversions between fuel and ground, each shedding heat; high voltage in a machine that lives in mud; and a battery carried low whether a job draws on it or not. The structure holding it is on the machine.
Two sources share one bus, under a rule about which does what: the engine makes the average, the battery makes the peak, and the motors take what they need from the pair.
Hybrid here means the two sources share the work instead of trading it. The engine turns a generator and nothing else, so it is held at the speed it burns fuel best and left there while the ground does what it likes. The battery sits on the same bus and answers the part of the load the engine is too slow for: a track biting, a lift starting, a tool stalling. When the load falls away the surplus goes back into the battery instead of out of the exhaust. Between them, the demand the engine sees is flat and the demand the ground makes is not, and that is what lets the engine be chosen for the average rather than for the peak.
Off the road this earns more than it does on it. Duty is peaky, so an engine behind a buffer covers what a larger one covers alone. The ambient is cold, so an engine that can be shut down and a battery that is warmed before it is asked for power are worth having. And the machine works standing still, with the tracks stopped and a tool running or power going off the deck, which is the case a mechanical spine handles worst and a generator handles without doing anything different.
Two sources on one bus, and neither is asked to do the other's job. The motors take what they need from the pair, at the track and at the deck alike.
Where all of it lives is the buyer's choice, and it is set out under the two arrangements below: the pack above the deck behind the cab, facing a technician at standing height, or in the tub between the track frames, where only the cab stands above the frame line, the whole deck is payload and the mass is as low as it will go. The branch of the bus that reaches the deck, and what a module has to bring to meet it, is on Configurations and the deck.
No differential, no cross-shaft. Each side is a complete drive of its own, fed from the same bus and commanded on its own terms.
Each track has its own inverter, motor, brake and reduction gearbox, and the whole channel sits outboard at the frame. The machine turns by driving the two sides at different speeds, and each side's torque is a value a controller sets rather than a consequence of what the other side is doing. Holding a line on broken ground becomes a control problem.
The brake in each channel is mechanical, held open by power, and closes by spring the moment power is removed. What it is sized against is on command and safety.
What the battery is for decides how large the engine has to be, and here it is there to change how fast power can move.
An engine changes its mind slowly. A battery does not. When a track bites and demands a surge the battery covers it, and when the load falls away the surplus returns to the battery instead of going out of the exhaust.
The packs sit low and centrally inside protected structure, with retention designed for transport and rollover loads and a vent path led away from the service positions. Each carries its own liquid circuit, separate from the engine's, because a battery wants a much narrower band.
The engine's state is part of the choice rather than a side effect, and each way of working sets which load has first call on the bus.
Parked and watching, the engine is off. Working hard, it runs and the battery adds the peaks on top. On tool work, hydraulic flow takes priority and traction holds a reserve. And if the engine is unavailable, the battery still moves the machine clear.
| The way of working | The engine | The battery |
|---|---|---|
| Standby | Off | Runs the sensing and the controllers on a protected reserve. |
| Quiet creep | Off | Moves the machine a short distance on its own. |
| Normal transit | Follows the average load | Absorbs and returns the difference. |
| Heavy mobility | Runs | Adds the peaks on top. |
| Engineering work | Runs | Backs the hydraulics; traction holds a reserve. |
| Stationary export | Runs | Takes up the slack in the load. |
| High export | Runs | Supports the output branch. |
| Recovery | Runs | Pull is limited and speed is cut. |
| Battery recovery | Unavailable | Moves the machine clear on its own. |
The engine's state is decided by the work in front of the machine.
High voltage on a machine that works in mud is a discipline, not a component. It is drawn into the architecture instead of being added to it as a procedure.
Every high-voltage branch passes through one protected junction assembly, and that assembly owns the sequence. It closes a pre-charge path first, so nothing sees a step change; the main contactors close after that. It measures the current and feeds each branch through its own protection, so one fault does not take the machine down.
Shutting down runs in one order every time: torque to zero, tool hydraulics stopped, deck output disabled, park brake applied, engine cooled, high voltage opened, discharge verified.
The same bus that drives the tracks feeds whatever is bolted to the deck, and that carries most of the answer to why this machine is modular.
A tractor hands an implement a power take-off: a spinning shaft, mechanical, at one speed, and the implement is designed around it. KAOS hands a mission module electrical power from a generator instead, over a connection specified with the job on configurations, where what crosses the deck is set out in full.
The machine's own tool circuit works the same way. Tools stay hydraulic, because hydraulics remain the right answer for a digging or lifting implement. What has changed is what turns the pump: its own motor on the bus, so tool flow follows the tool rather than the engine. Full flow standing still, or on the battery with the engine off.
A module fed from the carrier carries no powertrain: lighter and simpler than a self-powered unit, and cheaper to build. A shop can build the working end of a job without building a machine to go under it.
One engine, one generator and one bus serve every job the deck can carry. That is the answer to why a carrier and a set of modules rather than a yard of specialist machines, each with a powertrain under it.
A machine arranged around a generator and a bus already holds what sending power outward requires. Parked, it becomes a supply for the work around it, having driven itself there.
Nobody is towing a second engine to a site the carrier has already reached. Who buys on that basis is on who it is for.
Where the power pack lives is the buyer's choice, and the two answers give two genuinely different machines behind the same cab.
The engine, generator, battery, hydraulics and power electronics travel as one unit that bolts in and comes out as one piece. Two arrangements for it are offered, and the traction motors sit outboard at the frames in both.
Above the deck, behind the cab. The pack stands in its own bay behind the cab and the deck runs from there aft. Service access is the argument for it: covers come off at standing height, and the filters and the fill and bleed points face a technician rather than sitting under the machine.
Between the track frames. The pack lives in the tub, at or below axle height, and only the cab stands above the frame line. The deck is then flat and clear from the back of the cab to the tail, so on this arrangement, and not the other, the whole deck is payload. And the heaviest items sit as low as they will go, the useful answer to side slope, a loaded deck and a tall module.
Both take the same drivetrain, the same bus and the same connection to the deck, so a module specified for one is specified for the other.
A machine like this does not have a cooling system. It has several problems that want different temperatures, and they are held apart deliberately.
An engine wants to run hot. Power electronics tolerate more than a battery and less than an engine. A battery wants a narrow band a long way below all of it, and a battery held at engine-coolant temperature is a battery being aged. Hydraulic oil wants its own answer. So the machine runs separate circuits, not one.
The demanding case is not driving fast. It is working slowly or standing still, with none of the free airflow motion would give: sending power off the deck with the tracks stopped, or holding the hydraulics against a load. Fans vary in speed and reverse, because this machine works in chaff, dust, snow and crop debris.
Cold is designed in at the component level instead of added afterwards: the battery preheated before it is asked for power, heaters in the loops, heated fuel filtration, and cables, seals and fluids specified for the temperature.
A series arrangement is a considered choice with a price attached. It suits some work very well and it is the wrong answer for other work.
The drivetrain settles how this machine makes power and how it moves. The rest of what names a configuration is settled on the pages under this one.
The structure this drivetrain sits inside is on The machine. Who commands the carrier and what stops it is on Command and safety. How a configuration is named is on Configurations and the deck, and the line opens at CDNS KAOS.
Enquiries are screened, and the first conversation is about the work rather than the machine: what has to be carried, what has to be powered, and what a person should not be standing next to.
