WinterBreakers

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Inspiration

Most autonomous vehicles depend on GPS and expensive LiDAR. Neither is reliable or affordable everywhere, especially in forests, hills, disaster zones and border areas. We asked a simple question: if a person can walk across rough ground using only their eyes, why can't a robot do the same with one camera?

What it does

WinterBreakers is software that drives an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) from Point A to Point B across outdoor terrain on its own. It needs no GPS and no LiDAR, only a single camera. It works out which ground is safe to drive on and which is not (rocks, slopes, ditches), then plans and follows a safe path around the hazards.

How we built it

Perception: From the camera image alone, we estimate depth and build a map of the terrain around the vehicle. The map marks each patch of ground as drivable or dangerous.
Camera-agnostic: The camera can be mounted anywhere. The system estimates its height and tilt on every frame, so it needs no manual calibration.
Planning: A Nav2-style planner uses that map to find a safe route and steer the vehicle.
Testing: We first tested in a closed-loop simulation, then moved the same software onto real rover hardware.

Challenges we ran into

Judging distance and terrain shape from one flat image, with no depth sensor to rely on.
Camera height, tilt and roll that kept changing as the vehicle bounced over rough ground.
Safety issues that only appeared in off-road tests, such as the vehicle seeing its own body as an obstacle.
Keeping the simulation and real-world versions working together without breaking one while tuning the other.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

A full autonomous navigation pipeline that runs on a single camera.
The same stack runs in simulation and on a real rover.
No fixed camera setup is required.
Safety fixes found and resolved through real off-road testing.

What we learned

A camera, used well, can replace sensors that cost many times more.
Testing on real hardware exposes problems a simulation never shows.
Safety and reliability matter more than raw accuracy for a vehicle that moves by itself.