Team FREDNET and the PicoRover group has got his first Earth application job as a result of developing low cost space technology.

The AVANZA COMPETITVIDAD I+D+i" warrant called "TURISMAP. Generación de escenarios virtuales turísticos" or touristic virtual scenarios generation, consisting of 4,067,291.94 USD is a project developed and operated by a team of 9 partners, one of them the "UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE CATALUNYA" (UPC. Barcelona Tech)

The UPC. Barcelona Tech is one of the partners of Team FREDNET. They signed a MOU (Memorandum Of Undestanding) in which they will collaborate to develop low cost technologies for the private space industry. The PicoRover group, which is a part of Team FREDNET, is hosted by the UPC and other local enterprises like Composite ATE and D47. The PicoRover group is composed by teachers, students and collaborators.

In this TURISMAP project, the PicoRover group will develop the so called Field Capturing Device (FCD) which is a PicoRover, a 5 inches ball robot that travels around a historic building or an statue sending this information by wireless to the ground station. This information is processed by other partners, generating a 3D view of the interested object.

This project is funded by the Spanish "Ministerio de Industria, Turismo y Comercio" and is the first serious job for the PicoRover as an Earth application. The same robot will be sent very soon to the Moon, to be landed and safetly will travel 500 meters in hard conditions to make the same job: capture any historic human made object over the Moon surface. The PicoRover is one of the robots that will be sent to the Moon by the Team FREDNET. Team FREDNET is a group of scientists, technologists, and engineers who are using their combined talents to create a timely and elegant solution to win the Google Lunar X PRIZE which consists of 30 million dollar in prizes.

In this picture (2010-10-03_16.25.55.JPG), we are watching the PicoRover recording the famous "SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA CATHEDRAL". In the same city it was celebrated the "CIENCIA EN ACCIÓN" contest where the PicoRover has won the "Experimentos para un laboratorio espacial" or the space lab experiments.

The PicoRover is a ball like robot able to explore hard environments like the Moon surface, having a HD camera, a driven counter-weight and a tiny computer with wireless. This robot is able to climb sandy slopes up to 30 degrees and was developed by Joshua Tristancho. He leads the PicoRover group in Spain and is one of the responsible for the AVANZA grant. He is a teacher from the university UPC . Barcelona Tech in Spain. This robot was developend by students like Esteve Bardolet as shown in these pictures (2010-10-02_12.21.09.JPG and 2010-06-12_20.03.20.JPG) when they received the "Sace lab experiment" prize in the CIENCIA EN ACCION 2010 contest that was gave by Javier Cacho from the "INSTITUTO NACIONAL DE TÉCNICA AEROSPACIAL" (INTA) in Santiago de Compostela (Galicia) see picture (2010-10-03_16.26.31.JPG).