An autonomous vehicle comprising: a control system ; and high-dynamic range (HDR) system comprising: an HDR camera operable to produce a real-time HDR video; and a processing system configured to communicate with the HDR camera and the control system , wherein the processing system is operable to determine, based on the HDR video, a characteristic of a feature in the vehicle's environment and to issue to the control system an instruction, wherein: the control system provides an autopilot mode for operation of the vehicle , the instruction directs a change in the operation of the vehicle based on the characteristic, and the HDR camera comprises at least a high exposure (HE) sensor and a middle exposure (ME) sensor coupled to a processing device, wherein the HDR camera is configured to stream pixel values from each of the high exposure (HE) sensor and the middle exposure (ME) sensor in a frame-independent manner through a pipeline on the processing device, wherein the pipeline includes a kernel operation that, without waiting to collect an entire frame, operates on pixel values as they stream by examining, for a given pixel on the HE sensor , values from a neighborhood of pixels surrounding the given pixel, identifying saturated pixel values in said neighborhood of pixels, and using information from a corresponding neighborhood of pixels on the ME sensor to estimate a value for the given pixel; and a merge module to merge the pixel values streamed from each of the HE sensor and the ME sensor based on said identifed saturated pixels and the estimated value for the given pixel to produce the HDR video in real time. a control system ; and high-dynamic range (HDR) system comprising: an HDR camera operable to produce a real-time HDR video; and a processing system configured to communicate with the HDR camera and the control system , wherein the processing system is operable to determine, based on the HDR video, a characteristic of a feature in the vehicle's environment and to issue to the control system an instruction, wherein: an HDR camera operable to produce a real-time HDR video; and a processing system configured to communicate with the HDR camera and the control system , wherein the processing system is operable to determine, based on the HDR video, a characteristic of a feature in the vehicle's environment and to issue to the control system an instruction, wherein: the control system provides an autopilot mode for operation of the vehicle , the instruction directs a change in the operation of the vehicle based on the characteristic, and the HDR camera comprises at least a high exposure (HE) sensor and a middle exposure (ME) sensor coupled to a processing device, wherein the HDR camera is configured to stream pixel values from each of the high exposure (HE) sensor and the middle exposure (ME) sensor in a frame-independent manner through a pipeline on the processing device, wherein the pipeline includes a kernel operation that, without waiting to collect an entire frame, operates on pixel values as they stream by examining, for a given pixel on the HE sensor , values from a neighborhood of pixels surrounding the given pixel, identifying saturated pixel values in said neighborhood of pixels, and using information from a corresponding neighborhood of pixels on the ME sensor to estimate a value for the given pixel; and <EOS>