Loyalty can be a tough metric to master. It can also make or break your business. Once you can accurately calculate customer acquisition costs and lifetime value in a reliable way, you're an investment away from achieving scale. In a modern marketing ecosystem with 1-1 engagement becoming the rule rather than exception, the old "buy ten get one free" punch cards of yore won't cut it. Grubhub CMO Barbara Martin Coppola explained earlier this week at VentureBeat's Mobile Summit that anticipating your customers' next steps by developing a real-time feedback loop was critical to sustaining growth in mobile.

Six teams of self-driving semi trucks finished long-distance journeys across western Europe Thursday morning, The Guardian reports, marking a major milestone in autonomous vehicle technology. The trucks left from countries like Sweden and Germany and ended their trip in The Netherlands. Humans weren't totally taken out of the equation in achieving the feat. The trucks were essentially playing "follow the leader," with a group of driverless semis matching the speed and overall route set by a human driver in the vehicle up front. Still, this so-called "platooning" maneuver can result in benefits like less traffic (as the trucks can drive much closer to one another) and increased fuel efficiency, meaning a potentially greener shipping industry.

If its first quarter is anything to go by, 2016 may be shaping up historically as the 1491 of space discovery. The month preceding Valentine's Day alone provided what would once have been a year's worth of cosmic news. Blue Origin, the aerospace company owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, took one giant leap toward a new Age of Discovery by relaunching and landing a rocket that had already made a round-trip journey through the stratosphere – a revolutionary moment in private space exploration. A pair of researchers kicked off a frenzied planet hunt by demonstrating that a massive, heretofore undetected planet could be lurking on the outer edge of our solar system. Cosmologist Stephen Hawking suggested that unforeseen effects of rapid scientific progress might, paradoxically, cause the extinction of life on Earth in the next thousand years or so, adding, "By that time, we should have spread out into space, and to other stars, so a disaster on Earth would not mean the end of the human race." And scientists announced they'd detected gravitational waves, evidence of a billion-year-old collision between black holes, thus confirming the final and most obscure principle of Einstein's theory of relativity – and opening a window that may soon offer a glimpse of the universe's very creation.

Inc. (AMZN - Analyst Report) acquired California-based startup Orbeus last year to enhance its artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. The financial terms of the deal haven't been disclosed yet. Orbeus has carved its niche in image processing by using AI. This technology allows other software developers to add facial or object recognition to their own products. The use of artificial intelligence for image recognition has been gaining popularity in the tech sector as an increasing number of people are finding uses for it.

Nvidia introduces the DGX-1, a box that houses eight Tesla P100 cards with 16 GB of memory each. Touted as'world's first deep learning supercomputer,' it's designed to provide the computing needs of virtual reality and artificial intelligence researchers. Nvidia takes the wraps off the DGX-1, touting it as the "world's first deep learning supercomputer" that can deliver the computing needs of virtual reality developers and artificial intelligence researchers. Considering how the hardware maker already developed specialized GPU units for deep learning software, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that it's going further on that front. "The DGX-1 is easy to deploy and was created for one purpose: to unlock the powers of superhuman capabilities and apply them to problems that were once unsolvable," Jen-Hsun Huang, cofounder and CEO of Nvidia, says, noting that researchers will no longer have to rely solely on home-built computing solutions.

Last week, 42-year-old Ricky Ma made headlines for his creation of a life- sized robot he called Mark 1, which he modeled after Scarlett Johansson. The robot, which the Hong Kong designer dedicated 18 months of his life to completing, was an easy sell to the viral internet. The story was titillating enough: a grown man fulfilling his childhood dream, an inventor spending thousands of dollars and teaching himself how to use 3D printing software to essentially create a bot that smiles when you tell it that it's beautiful. And the robotic re-creation of Johansson is uncanny and compelling; doll-like, it approaches the look of a flesh-and-blood woman, yet its empty eyes and blank synthetic face are an insistent remind that Mark 1 is not. Mark 1 is ostensibly for recreational use.

Self-driving cars may be coming sooner than you think! Google has expanded their testing program to Phoenix! Rob Smith (@robsmithonline) fills you in on all the new developments. In this May 13, 2015, file photo, Google's self-driving Lexus car drives along the street during a demonstration at the Google campus in Mountain View, Calif. The company is now testing self-driving cars in the metro Phoenix area. PHOENIX -- Google has brought its self-driving vehicles to the Phoenix area to see how the technology performs amid crippling summer heat and, if researchers are lucky, a giant dust storm or two.

A new eGames international gaming tournament will make its debut in Rio during this summer's Olympic Games. The event, launched as part of this week's London Games Festival, offers medals and national pride rather than cash prizes for the winners. The competition, backed by the UK government, will be run by the new International eGames Committee (IEGC). Britain, Canada, Brazil and the USA are the only confirmed entrants so far with more expected to follow. In Olympic years, both summer and winter, the eGames will take place in the host cities - with future tournaments planned for Pyeongchang in 2018 and Tokyo in 2020.

Swedish carmaker Volvo has said it plans to launch a self-driving experiment in China involving up to 100 cars. Local drivers will test cars on public roads in "everyday conditions", according to a company press release. The move was announced at an event in Beijing on 7 April, though details of a start date were not provided. One analyst said he thought China was at the forefront of the development of autonomous cars. Volvo is owned by a Chinese firm, Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co.

Back in Hannover Messe 2011, Germany announced the Industry 4.0 concept and initiated the world's fourth industrial revolution. Since then, Hannover Messe has become a focal point for Industry 4.0 innovations. As Hannover Messe 2016 closes in, the exhibition will once again be surrounded by various Industry 4.0-related hot topics such as integrated industry, smart manufacturing and more. Coming soon on April 25 to 29, Hannover Messe 2016 will be based on the theme "Integrated Industry – Discover Solutions", which aims to provide an interpretation of the smart manufacturing model of Industry 4.0. As a Taiwanese company with deep expertise in IoT automation, NEXCOM has planned four themed demonstrations that map out a complete solution blueprint for industry 4.0 in the upcoming event. Joe Lin, General Manager of NEXCOM's IoT Automation Solutions Business Group, states, "Early Industry 4.0 solutions focused on the lower layers of factory communication where IoT gateways were used to integrate different industrial protocols, bridging the Industry 4.0 last mile connection to fulfill the'connected' concept.