Taiwan has developed a technology to retrieve information from damaged chips in the global positioning systems (GPS) used by helicopters and other vehicles, which has been provided to Japan, the Council for Aviation Safety (CAS) said Tuesday. Kuan Wen-lin, CAS laboratory director, briefed the media on the use of the technology, noting that Japan's Transportation Safety Board (JTSB) sought the council's help in September to help determine the cause of a helicopter crash. The council used the technology to read the information in the Japanese helicopter's GPS and discovered that it was caught in a heavy fog and crashed into a mountain, Kuan said. Chip makers usually are unable to retrieve information from chips that have been burned, soaked or broken in an accident. Chang's lab, however, uses reverse engineering to 'rebuild' the data on the damaged chips. In cooperation with GPS manufacturers, the lab last year designed a device that can 'read' the retrieved data, he noted. Kuan presented a paper on the lab's research and the new device at an international meeting of aviation accident investigators earlier this year, winning an award for best paper. The device was first used to help investigate an accident in Chiayi, southern Taiwan, in May last year. In August, 2009, the device was again used to read information from a damaged GPS aboard a helicopter on a rescue mission after a typhoon. Most helicopters and super-light aircraft are not equipped with the 'black boxes' -- flight data recorders -- that are installed on larger aircraft, but instead have GPS, which records flight times, positions, directions and velocities, which can be used to help determine the causes of an accident. 