During the year 2001, a Milwaukee based bank called Hey Mercedes performed live 114 times. That same year, the band released its first full record, Everynight Fire Works. Having been formed two years prior, Hey Mercedes had been signed by Vagrant Records shortly after the release of their first EP.
The band kept on touring and released its second full-length album in 2003, Loses Control. On April 23 of 2005, at the Metro in Chicago, the band performed at its 359th gig. After that, the band decided to quit.
The band made a few reunion performances over the years, the last one being at the Wrecking Ball festival in Atlanta in 2016. Since then, Hey Mercedes has been reclused to music history.
A-Class Performance
In 2018, Hey Mercedes made a re-entrance albeit this time, not through the band itself. This time it was through the introduction of the Mercedes-Benz User Experience, aka MBUX. In a promotional video com, Mercedes-Benz demonstrated how the driver would be able to communicate and give instruction to the car through voice command.
Mercedes-Benz showcased its new technology at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show, CES, in 2018. In the following video, Sajjad Khan, Vice President Digital Vehicle & Mobility at Mercedes-Benz, explains what the MBUX can do, how it learns, and how it will support Mercedes drivers.
Driving Assistance Systems
Voice control is not the only place where sensors come into play in the modern car. Sensor and monitoring are increasingly playing a bigger and bigger role in cars (or should we say autonomous vehicles) in the future.
Active parking assistance one a great example of how sensor and monitoring systems will make increase the autonomy and driving assistance that is being built into vehicles.
The parking assist technology implemented in the A-Class uses ultrasound and ultrasonic sensors.
Ultrasonic Sensors
Ultrasonic sensors measure distances by using ultrasonic waves. The sensor head emits an ultrasonic wave and receives the wave reflected back from the target. Ultrasonic sensors measure the distance to the target by measuring the time between the emission and reception.
Project Sensor 