Coretronic Intelligent Robotics (CIRC)
Taiwanese subsidiary of the Coretronic optics group and a member of Taiwan's military 'drone national team,' building AI reconnaissance and surveillance UAVs on a deliberately non-Chinese supply chain.
Background
Coretronic Intelligent Robotics Corporation (CIRC) is the drone and robotics arm of Coretronic Corporation (TWSE: 5371), the Hsinchu group that is the world's largest contract manufacturer of projectors and display backlight modules. Coretronic pivoted toward AI, big data and cloud computing around 2015-16 and channeled its robotics ambitions into CIRC, which Taiwan's corporate registry lists as founded in 2017 (LinkedIn cites 2015; the website carries a 2018 copyright — the exact date is muddy). Headquartered at Hsinchu Science Park with a test-flight and assembly site at Zhunan, Miaoli, plus satellite offices in the UK (Hemel Hempstead) and Tokyo, CIRC is led by president Jeffrey Hsieh; parent-group president Andy Sin sets the wider drone strategy.
From the outset CIRC chased the roughly 5% of the drone market that is fully autonomous — 'drone-in-a-box' systems that patrol fixed routes, run AI image recognition and push data to the cloud — rather than the manually piloted mass market DJI dominates. It leverages Coretronic's optical, mechanical, thermal and electronic engineering to build its own gimbal cameras, flight-control and battery-management systems, and ground-control software. That vertical integration made CIRC a standout entrant when Taipei stood up its indigenous military-drone program.