The winners of last year's Pentagon-sponsored robot race are back to take on another challenge — this time to develop a vehicle that can drive through congested city traffic all by itself.

Stanford University, whose unmanned Volkswagen dubbed Stanley won last year's desert race, was among 11 teams selected Monday to receive government money to participate in a contest requiring robots to carry out a simulated military supply mission.

Stanford, which teamed up with the German automaker again, will enter a Passat sedan outfitted with the latest sensors, lasers and other high-tech gear. Engineers have tested the car on a closed course and will begin actual tests after scientists finish writing the program that will serve as the car's brain.

"It's definitely a more challenging problem scientifically," said team member David Stavens.

The competition, slated to take place in a yet-undisclosed location in November 2007, is supported by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, to spur development of military vehicles that could fight in war zones without any sort of remote control.

The robotic vehicles will have to navigate a complex 60-mile test course designed like a real city street filled with moving manned and unmanned vehicles. Participants will be tested on how well they make sharp turns, navigate traffic circles and avoid obstacles such as utility poles, trees and parked cars. The vehicles will also have to obey traffic laws, change lanes, merge with moving cars and pull into a parking lot using only their computer brain and sensors.

The first three vehicles that successfully complete the mission in less than six hours will win trophies, according to updated rules posted on DARPA’s Web site.

The robotic challenge could turn into a rematch between archrivals Stanford and Carnegie Mellon University. CMU came in second and third last year with a converted Humvee and Hummer.

CMU, which recently partnered with General Motors Corp., will enter a souped-up Chevy Tahoe. Engineers are installing computers and sensors and will test the vehicle later this month.

Team member Chris Urmson said cars have to be smarter this time around. "The biggest challenge will be to drive in traffic and stay on the road. It's a whole new level," Urmson said.

The 11 teams, made up of mostly veterans from last year's robotic challenge, each will receive up to $1 million in funding from DARPA. In turn, the agency will obtain some licensing rights to the technology that's developed.

The other teams include: Autonomous Solutions of Utah, California Institute of Technology, Cornell University, Golem Group LLC of California, Honeywell Aerospace Advanced Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Oshkosh Truck Corp., Raytheon Co., and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Later this month, DARPA will choose an undisclosed number of teams that will not be subsidized by the agency but can compete for a spot in the finals.

Last year, DARPA awarded a $2 million winner-take-all prize to Stanford, which beat out a field of 23 vehicles by traversing 132 miles of the Mojave Desert.

DARPA's inaugural contest in 2004 ended without a winner when all the entrants broke down before the finish line.

Science Research Subcommittee Chairman Bob Inglis (R-SC) introduced legislation called the H-Prize Act of 2006 (H.R. 5143) Thursday in the U.S. House of Representatives. The creation of a monetary “H-Prize” is designed to attract the best and brightest minds to attack technological and commercial market obstacles in moving to a hydrogen economy.

“America is treading water in a sea of rising demand for oil that includes China and India,” Inglis said. “The market is now in a position to reward those who will innovate our way to a hydrogen economy. Those innovators will create jobs, clean the air, and improve our national security.”

Modeled after the successful Ansari X-Prize awarded for entrepreneurial space flight, the three category H-Prize with a $100 million grand prize would be awarded for commercial transformational technologies that changes hydrogen technology and brings the hydrogen car to driveways around the country.

Filed with 14 co-sponsors, the three major prize categories include:

1.) Technological advancements – Four $1 million prizes awarded annually in the categories of hydrogen production, storage, distribution and utilization.

2.) Prototypes – One $4 million prize awarded every other year for the creation of a working hydrogen vehicle prototype.

3.) Transformation technologies – A maximum $100 million prize -- $10 million in cash and up to $90 million in matching funds for private capital -- would be awarded for changes in hydrogen technologies that meet or exceed objective criteria in production and distribution to the consumer.

The Secretary of Energy will contract with a private foundation or panel that will include experts in the field to establish criteria for the prizes.

The legislation is the result of comments made by a group of automotive, energy, academic and political leaders met in Washington late last year to discuss the concept of the H-Prize and how to give the industry and marketplace a shove toward the hydrogen economy and demonstrate a national commitment to energy security.

J. Craig Venter, the biologist who mapped the human genome, now reportedly wants to create a microbe that will turn cornstalks into ethanol.

Venter, who compares himself favorably with Charles Darwin, has teamed with Mexican billionaire Alfonso Romo Garza in the undertaking. Of course, he's antagonistic, Garza told The Washington Post. But I love controversial people because those are the people who change the world.

Using $15 million he received from Garza, Venter has formed Synthetic Genomics Inc. in Rockville, Md., home of the Venter Institute and the Institute for Genomic Research, both of which have received U.S. Energy Department grants to explore using genomics for energy purposes.

Venter also seeks to modify microorganisms to continuously produce hydrogen, the Post said.

Also joining Venter in the new business are Hamilton O. Smith, winner of a Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine and an expert in DNA manipulation techniques, and Aristides Patrinos, who directed the U.S. Energy Department's biological and environmental research.

Venter predicts Genomics is going to do for the energy and chemical field what it did in the early 1990s for medical biotechnology.

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are making plans to invest $1.1 billion on what they believe will be the largest social impact made by any organization.

Dr. Larry Brilliant has helped the blind to see and has been instrumental in eradicating small pox in India. But these feats may pale in comparison to the challenge that now lies before him. On Feb. 21, Google said Brilliant, an epidemiologist and tech entrepreneur, will become the executive director of Google.org, the Web-search giant's charitable arm. Larry and Sergey have promised shareholders they will make a social impact that will eventually "eclipse Google itself" by tackling the world's problems. In autumn, 2005, they outlined plans for Google.org, a network that includes both a charitable foundation with a $90 million endowment and other forms of social investing.

The network will focus its charitable endeavors on global poverty, energy, and the environment. Ultimately, Google.org will spend a sum that equals about 1% of the number of shares Google had when it went public. Based on the current stock price, that implies spending of more than $1.1 billion. Says Brilliant, "I'm drinking from a firehose."

Dr. Larry Brilliant Brilliant has just the eclectic background that makes him a natural fit for Google's philanthropic thrust. He is a physican and epidemiologist who has also been heralded as a tech visionary. He spent a decade studying religion in at a Himalayan monastery in India, followed by a stint as a diplomat with the U.N. He helped lead a World Health Organization program to eradicate smallpox and later founded the Berkeley-based Seva Foundation, an international health nonprofit group credited with restoring sight to more than 2 million blind people.

His tech credentials are also impressive. In 1985, Brilliant co-founded the Well, one of the oldest online communities, and he has been involved in a number of tech startups in the past two decades. "I've lived these two different personalities," says Brilliant. "I understand how a technology company works and will commit those resources to helping Google make the world a better place."

This is why the tech company chose Brilliant, says Sheryl Sandberg, Google's vice-president of global online sales and operations. "Larry Brilliant has the true passion to change the world, combined with proven ability to do so."

Brilliant plans to start his tenure with a pilgrimage to other foundations that are making a difference on a large scale. First stop: the Gates Foundation, where he says Dr. William Foege, senior fellow in global health, is a dear friend and former mentor. "He's the first person I'll call," Brilliant says.

Brilliant expects to hire experts over the next few months to build knowledge in the fields where the network aims to make its mark. Apart from that, he says he has no immediate hiring plans, and reckons the organization doesn't need to be big to be effective. Meanwhile, Brilliant has no shortage of folks who are lining up to volunteer with Google.org, starting from within the Googleplex itself. More than 400 Google employees currently help administer the Google Grants program, which has donated $33 million in advertising to more than 850 nonprofit groups.

For now, Brilliant's not divulging much more about how the network plans to spend its windfall. The Google.org Web site remains skeletal, providing only broad brush strokes for the network's long-term plans. Google.org currently supports the Acumen Fund, a nonprofit that addresses global poverty through capital markets.

It is also funding TechnoServe's attempt to launch a business-plan competition and entrepreneurship-development program in Ghana. And it backs PlanetRead, a literacy group in India that is adding subtitles to song videos and Bollywood films to encourage reading among people with low literacy skills.

Those who've worked with Brilliant express faith in his ability to execute Google.org's mission. "Larry is able to get his vision across and really rev up people and have them buy into what he's trying to tell them," says Anthony Kozlowski, executive director of Seva, founded 27 years ago by Brilliant.

As Brilliant prepares for his new role, he's already clear on his vision. He says: "In 10 years, I'd like people to say Google changed the world less for its search engine than for the way in which it changed philanthropy to make the world a better place." Given Google's revolutionary impact on the way people search for information, Brilliant's order is a tall one indeed.

A variety of new prizes are being contemplated to incentivize different aspects of the future. If you don't understand the power of these prizes, you're really missing the idea behind the new generation of power brokers that are starting to emerge.

X Prize Foundation founder, Peter Diamandis, has recruited a heavyweight advisory board, including Google founder Larry Page and genomic research pioneer Craig Venter to work with him in devising new prizes to incentivize the world of science. More specifically, they are working on developing prizes in the automotive arena, nanotechnology and education.

However, the potential goes far beyond science prizes. Without any controls, prizes could be created in the fields of social engineering, cultural modification, re-inventing government, and manipulation of the financial markets.

Believe me when I say, we are only seeing the tip of a very big iceberg here.