Detailed information about CANopen can be found here; http://www.canopensolutions.com/english/about_canopen/about_canopen.shtml
A standardised CAN network protocol used in the auto and manufacturing industry. CANopen uses a normal CAN bus but it is a network protocol defining how the CAN packets should look. It allows speed of upto 1Mbit per second and has many easy to use (though often expensive) software configuration suites and CAN bus monitoring programs. The advantage of using CANopen standard over just a simple CAN bus (where the user defines each can packet)