Abstract: CAN bus is applied to autonomous underwater vehicle(AUV) to construct a distributed control system with multimaster to replace the traditional centralized control structure and master-slave network structure used by AUV.The application of CAN bus in AUV is introduced from the viewpoint of the hardware and software.The controller of CAN bus(using) P87C591 microcontroller is designed.According to the features of the AUV distributed control system,the application layer protocol of CAN bus with corresponding software is designed.The feasibility and reliability of the control system is verified with lake test.