Camera applications have the inherent advantage of processing extremely rich data in much the same way the human eye does?in the sense that they can ?see?. Of course, this is easier said than done in that ?seeing? requires tremendous advances in software ingenuity (machine vision) and computing power. This likely explains why the industry initially opted to utilize radar for forward-facing applications.
However, even before the advances that occurred in vision software/computing power, cameras had the distinct advantage of having a technical monopoly on certain applications like lane-departure warning (LDW), intelligent headlamp control (IHC), traffic sign/light recognition (TSR/TLR) and object classification.
