Cirque Announces Opening of a New Taiwan Office

April 26th 2021 – Taipei - Cirque Corporation, the original capacitive touch solutions company, is excited to announce the opening of a new business development and engineering office in Taiwan. Located in the heart of Taipei, the new facility will enable us to better support our customers in Asia and continue our trajectory of growth.

Location:

Room 201, 2/F-A, 170 Dunhua North Road

Taipei Hung Tai Centre

Songshan District, Taipei, Taiwan

10548

宏泰大樓

10548 台北市松山區

敦化北路170號2樓A室之201

The new office space will provide meeting room facilities, workspaces and shared spaces for collaboration and co-working. Cirque is in the process of expanding our team in Taiwan with a particular focus on adding engineering capability. This team will work closely with our customers located in Taiwan and China, providing in-time zone and native language support.

Up to this point Cirque’s Taiwan team has been primarily working remotely. With the opening of the new office, and also improvements relating to COVID-19 in Taiwan, the team is looking forward to having a shared workspace.

Jessica Tsai, Cirque’s key account manager located in Taiwan had this to say: “Although we don't have to meet every day, the establishment of the Cirque office allows us to find a sense of belonging, touches our motivation for work, and also shortens the distance between us and our customers. ”

( 雖然我們不用天天見面，但Cirque辦公室的成立，讓我們找到了歸屬感，觸動了我們的工作動力，同時也縮短了我們與客戶之間的距離。)

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About Cirque: Cirque is one of the original inventors of capacitive touch technology and continues to push the innovation envelope for new input methods in markets like notebook computers, virtual reality, and secure payment. For more about Cirque and the range of solutions we offer, visit www.cirque.com.

Cirque is a wholly owned subsidiary of Alps Alpine, a world leading electro-mechanical components supplier. To learn more about the wide range of solutions offered by Alps Alpine visit https://www.alpsalpine.com

Cirque, GlidePoint and all associated logos are registered trademarks of Cirque Corporation

Cirque Celebrates 30 Years Providing Innovative Touch Solutions

April 1st 2021 - Salt Lake City, UT – In the late 1980s George E. Gerpheide, PhD began work on the capacitive sensing technology that would become the GlidePoint® trackpad. In 1991, Cirque Corporation was founded and today we celebrate 30 years of providing world class human/machine interface solutions.

At the time GlidePoint launched, portable computers still used track balls or point sticks as their main input device. These technologies were imprecise, and prone to mechanical failure. The capacitive trackpad is impervious to environmental contaminants, has no moving parts and provides precision finger tracking. In 1994 the first notebook computer with a trackpad launched using Cirque’s technology to power the trackpad.

Throughout the 1990s, trackpads would become the de-facto standard for portable computers. Cirque also maintained a heavy retail presence providing desktop touchpads as a flexible mouse alternative device. GlidePoint would go on to win various industry awards and eventually Cirque expanded into the keyboard market with products like the Wave Keyboard and the Cirque Input Center.

Cirque always had a close relationship with Alps Electric, now Alps Alpine (Nikkei 225: APELY), particularly for supporting the notebook market. In 2003, Cirque became a wholly owned subsidiary of Alps Alpine.

Eventually Cirque would expand into other markets. Today, touch solutions evolved from the original GlidePoint platform can be found in industrial/medical devices, luxury vehicles, game and virtual reality controllers and point of sale touchscreens. Notebook computers continue to be a main market segment for Cirque and GlidePoint trackpads are used daily by millions of computer users around the globe.

Cirque was named for the mountain Cirques of the Wasatch range. Our home has always been Salt Lake City, and our strength has always come from our team of engineering professionals who work every day to bring innovation and quality to our customers.

Anna Williamson, Cirque CFO, has been with the company for 25 years. She shared these these thoughts:

“I’ve had the opportunity to be a part of Cirque for many years and can honestly say it has been an amazing experience. There have been challenging times and many chances to grow and learn as an individual. Thank you to all my co-workers throughout the years. Thank you to our founders and the technologies they envisioned. Thank you to our customers and our vendors. And thank you to AlpsAlpine for allowing us to continue to be Cirque: A company of smart people working together to solve hard problems in our own unique way. I feel blessed to be a part of Cirque, surrounded by people that make my days better.”

Brian Monson, Cirque president, had this to say:

“30 years is an amazing accomplishment and fills me with gratitude for all the great current and past employees, customers, and vendors which have been instrumental in making this happen. I'm excited for the challenge the next 30 year presents. I'm confident that continued innovation in human interface solutions will be required.

I'm also confident that once again it will require close collaboration and partnerships with our customers and vendors. With those great partnerships I'm sure we can do innovative and amazing things that make me excited for the future.”

As we look towards the future, we wish to extend our sincerest thanks to our past and present employees and their families, to our customers, to our vendors, and to Alps Alpine. What we do would not be possible without these close partnerships. We are excited for the opportunities and challenges that the next 30 years will bring and look forward to continuing to explore the technology of touch.

Cirque® releases standalone trackpad that supports Microsoft® PTP

Salt Lake City, UT - December 21, 2020 – Cirque is pleased to announce the release of a plug and play USB trackpad with support for Microsoft’s Precision Touchpad Protocol (PTP). PTP is a standard for high quality trackpads that specifies certain performance criteria and adds support for native Windows multi-finger gestures and controls. PTP has been the quality standard in notebook computers for several years, and now with the launch of our first stand-alone PTP touchpad Cirque is making this feature available for keyboards, external trackpads and industrial devices.

The first product to be released with this capability is an updated version of our TM105065 USB trackpad. With a size of 105 x 65 mm, this unit meets Microsoft’s recommended requirements for PTP touchpad size. Featuring a standard USB cable, the module is plug-and-play with any Windows 10 PC, featuring the full set of PTP gestures and native control panel settings, with no driver installation required.

For embedded applications, a PTP I2C version of the TM105065 will be coming soon. We also plan to update our complete line of Gen4 trackpads with PTP support for additional sizes and formfactors.

For more information on PTP, check out this post, or the documentation available from Microsoft.

For our complete list of our off-the-shelf standard GlidePoint® trackpads or custom solutions, visit these pages at cirque.com:

• Off the shelf trackpads

• Custom solutions

Cirque is one of the original inventors of capacitive touch technology and continues to push the innovation envelope for new input methods in markets like notebook computers, virtual reality, and secure payment. For more about Cirque and the range of solutions we offer, visit www.cirque.com.

Cirque is a wholly owned subsidiary of Alps Alpine, a world leading electro-mechanical components supplier. To learn more about the wide range of solutions offered by Alps Alpine visit https://www.alpsalpine.com

Cirque, GlidePoint and all associated logos are registered trademarks of Cirque Corporation

Microsoft is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.

To our customers and partners,

Between earthquakes and COVID-19, it is undoubtedly an "interesting" time. Most importantly, we hope that you and your families are staying healthy and safe. It is critical that we all take care of ourselves and each other as we navigate these uncertain waters. At Cirque, we are continuing to build and deliver amazing touch solutions, and we want to take a few moments to provide you with an update on our operations.

A few weeks back, we performed testing of our IT systems and rolled out a work from home program. As a result, we were ready to go when government-mandated social distancing was ordered. Everything continues to function well, and most Cirque staff are successfully working from home.

Key personnel such as production and shipping/receiving are still operating in the Cirque office to make sure that orders get out the door on time. Staff working in the office are practicing enhanced cleaning routines and alternative scheduling to minimize interpersonal contact.

And yes, we did have an earthquake in the Salt Lake Valley last week. Those that were in the office got a pretty good shake, but there was no damage or power loss, and things were quickly back to normal.

Now more than ever we need effective technologies to help enable teams to stay productive, and we at Cirque are committed to continuing to provide touch solutions that make mobile work possible. Please don't hesitate to reach out to us with any concerns you may have.

The Cirque Team

Introducing the DOTKey™ Typing App

Salt Lake City, Utah - Cirque Corporation is pleased to introduce DOTKey – the revolutionary app that will change the way you type. DOTKey, developed by BYU computer science professor Frank Jones, provides an exciting new way to type and one that is more compatible with touch screen keyboards and mobile phones. Cirque will be working with DOTKey to promote their solution to the market.

While the QWERTY keyboard has long been the standard in the U.S., it is much criticized for being slow and inefficient due to the distance your fingers travel while typing. European countries have adopted other keyboard layouts better suited to language variations and typing efficiencies, but the U.S. has been slow to change. 

“We’re stuck in a cycle,” says Jones, “We teach kids how to use QWERTY because it’s everywhere. Why is QWERTY everywhere? Because we teach kids to use it.”

MIT Technology Review’s Rachel Metz believes, “if anything is going to convince us to replace or substantially alter the QWERTY keyboard, it will need to seriously improve how we communicate.”

Ask any smartphone or tablet user about the ease and accuracy of typed emails and text messages and you will hear stories replete with typos, auto-correct inaccuracies and the lack of privacy when using voice-to-text functionality.

Enter DOTKey for iOS and Android.

DOTKey adjusts to your hand.

DOTKey’s user-friendly experience adjusts to your hand instead of forcing you to adjust to a keyboard. Utilizing advanced gesture recognition algorithms, users can quickly and accurately type through a series of taps or swipes of a finger or fingers. Not only does it facilitate typing with one hand (right or left), it also adjusts to three-finger or five-finger inputs and even follows hand drift movement for uninterrupted typing.

We are excited about the new paradigm for touchscreen and touchpad input that DOTKey can create. We believe the technology can disrupt the input market as we know it today and are honored to be working with DOTKey to drive market adoption.

-Nate Coy, Chief Sales Officer, Cirque Corporation

To learn more about DOTKey, go to their website , or start practicing by downloading the iOS or Android mobile app. For custom integrations and enterprise applications, contact Cirque at info@cirque.com.

The Cirque and DOTKey alliance is a great fit and one that supports the type of adaptive touch technology that will create the next chapter in human interface solutions. Cirque is one of the original inventors of capacitive touch technology and continues to push the innovation envelope for new input methods in markets like virtual reality, secure payment and computing.

For more about Cirque and the range of solutions we offer, visit www.cirque.com.

Advanced Gen4 Trackpad Dev Kit Now Available

Salt Lake City, UT - Cirque has released a new development kit that features an advanced GlidePoint® Gen4 trackpad. Gen4 features high resolution x,y tracking as well as built in gestures for a driver-free multi-touch experience. Coming soon, Gen4 will also feature compatibility with Microsoft's Precision Touchpad Protocol (PTP) which enables high performance native trackpad features with recent versions of Windows. 

Along with the Gen4 trackpad is an Arduino-based development board and sample code to make it easy for developers to get up and running with GlidePoint.  This development board features an expandable design for connecting haptics, sensors and other devices. This flexible system enables rapid development and can serve as the foundation for a full product design project.

The GlidePoint Gen4 Development Kit is available for purchase at https://www.cirque.com/gen4-trackpad-dev-kit. 

Off the shelf trackpads, including several sizes of Gen4 modules can be found here: https://www.cirque.com/glidepointspecification.

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Cirque is one of the original inventors of capacitive touch technology and continues to push the innovation envelope for new input methods in markets like virtual reality, secure payment and computing. For more about Cirque and the range of solutions we offer, visit www.cirque.com.

Cirque is a wholly owned subsidiary of Alps Electric, a world leading electro-mechanical components supplier. To learn more about the wide range of solutions offered by Alps Electric, visit www.alps.com.

Cirque, GlidePoint and all associated logos are registered trademarks of Cirque Corporation.

Alps and all associated logos are registered trademarks of Alps Electric Co., Ltd.

Cirque at the Sensor Expo 2018

Cirque Corp. will be exhibiting at the Sensor Expo 2018. We will be located inside the ALPS Electric booth 916. We will be showing off our VR Grip demo and some of our custom sensors. You can always check out our demos on our youtube channel if you won't be attending the Sensor Expo. 

Sensors Expo & Conference is the largest gathering of engineers and engineering professionals involved in sensors and sensing-related technologies. For over 30 years, more than 6,400 professionals gather from across the nation and 40+ countries to explore today's sensor technologies and find the solutions to tomorrow's sensing challenges. The 2018 event will host 300+ exhibitors on the Expo Floor, leading experts from the industry in the most comprehensive sensor-focused Conference Program, and unparalleled Event Features and Networking Opportunities.

VR Grip™

The Future of VR & AR

 Salt Lake City, UT, 4/5/18 – Cirque is pleased to introduce their latest technology platform, VR Grip™, a solution that combines capacitive touch with proximity sensing to create a truly integrated virtual reality experience. VR Grip™ combines tracking of a users hand and fingers on the controller surface, and with proximity sensing to tracks finger position in the open space above the controller surface. This provides functionality similar to a glove tracking system, while maintaining the direct tactile feedback and trigger control of a controller. Cirque’s VR Grip™ was featured at CES 2018 and can be viewed on YouTube at https://youtu.be/kKNRDxCsKDI.

Of the company’s recent developments in VR and AR, Cirque’s President, Brian Monson, said “VR Grip™ introduces the next generation of controllers for both virtual and augmented reality, in which you can fully integrate the controller into an application for a true immersive experience unlike any other.”

Cirque’s architecture uses only one touch controller chip to power both the VR Grip sensor and a traditional trackpad. This enables flexible and affordable architectures. A development kit is available to experience VR Grip and start developing your own project. Visit http://www.cirque.com/cirque-vr-grip to learn more.

Cirque Corporation is the inventor and original developer of capacitive trackpad technology, founded in 1991. Since that time, our original GlidePoint® technology has provided the core of each new development of touch-input solutions. Visit www.cirque.com and our YouTube channel to discover more.