Cite from Wikipedia:

CAN bus (for controller area network) is a vehicle bus standard designed to allow microcontrollers and devices to communicate with each other within a vehicle without a host computer.

CAN bus is a message-based protocol, designed specifically for automotive applications but now also used in other areas such as aerospace, maritime, industrial automation and medical equipment.

Development of the CAN bus started originally in 1983 at Robert Bosch GmbH. The protocol was officially released in 1986 at the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) congress in Detroit, Michigan. The first CAN controller chips, produced by Intel and Philips, came on the market in 1987. Bosch published the CAN 2.0 specification in 1991. In 2012 Bosch has specified the improved CAN data link layer protocol, called CAN FD, which will extend the ISO 11898-1.

CAN bus is one of five protocols used in the on-board diagnostics (OBD)-II vehicle diagnostics standard. The OBD-II standard has been mandatory for all cars and light trucks sold in the United States since 1996, and the EOBD standard has been mandatory for all petrol vehicles sold in the European Union since 2001 and all diesel vehicles since 2004.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controller_Area_Network

Project Location: https://bitbucket.org/tobylorenz/iso_11898