Arbe launches Gryphon 4D radar for ground robots that must see ditches in dust

Arbe Robotics, the Tel Aviv radar chip and system company listed on Nasdaq and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, said in a press release on Oct 19 that it has launched Gryphon, a 4D imaging radar built for unmanned ground vehicles that drive through dust, over rough ground and on unpaved routes. The company said the product extends its addressable market beyond passenger cars into the UGV segment. [Company profile](/companies/arbe-robotics).

The release names no customer, price, shipping date or unit volume. What it gives is the hardware recipe and the use case, and both say a good deal about where perception for off-road robots is heading.

What Gryphon is, in numbers

Gryphon uses 48 transmit and 48 receive channels, the same automotive-grade architecture Arbe sells to car makers, to produce a dense 4D point cloud of range, azimuth, elevation and velocity. By standard MIMO arithmetic, 48 by 48 gives 2,304 virtual channels, which is what lets an imaging radar separate small objects that a conventional automotive radar merges into one return. The unit is solid state with no moving parts, is designed for low size, weight, power and cost, and supports long data cables so it can be mounted away from the compute box. Arbe said it scales from small UGVs to heavy industrial vehicles and from operator assistance and teleoperation to leader-follower convoys and full autonomy.

Why radar, and why the ditches matter

The company's argument is that dust, smoke, fog, rain, snow and darkness degrade cameras and lidar every day off road, while radar keeps working. Gryphon is meant to pick out rocks, debris, barriers and vegetation and also negative obstacles such as ditches, holes and washouts, the places a vehicle must not drive into. Arbe said the same data supports free-space mapping, tracking, odometry and localisation where satellite navigation is unavailable, a nod to jammed GNSS on military routes.