Hybrid rover outdoor test

The two composite sides of the rover's battery pack will interlock, using teeth on the upper portion to latch into openings in the base. This will clamp the lithium ion cells from A123 into position to provide the 273 W-hr capacity the rover will use when it passes through shadow (during flight to the Moon or on the surface) or when it needs a supplement to the power from its solar panels. The composite battery pack parts created earlier were this week robotically shaped to create the interlock structure.

March 16, 2010, the Picorover group held a press conference at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya.

"This week, PicoRover Group has grown with a few members between students, teachers and involved people. For this reason we have done a press conference in order to show our two models, the Lunar one and the Earth one.", writes Joshua in the Team FREDNET forum.

This generated a lot of coverage in the Spanish media.

Videos

Espai Terra (TV3.CAT):

See video in higher resolution. There is also another video for the article about X PRIZE.

Un robot podria fotografiar la superfície de la lluna, www.btvnoticies.cat:

Google convoca un premi per enviar un robot a la Lluna (starts with a few seconds of advertisement):

Now you know how to correctly pronounce Picorover ;-)

Articles

Un grupo de universitarios españoles enviará a la Luna un robot con forma de pelota, El Mundo. There was also a short column in the paper (PDF).

Estudiantes españoles enviarán un robot a la Luna, Elpais.com

Estudiants de la UPC tracten d’enviar un robot esfèric a la Lluna, UPC. Sala de premsa anuncement

Investigadores de la UPC diseñan un robot capaz de circular por la superficie de la Luna, Europa Press

El robot catalán que puede ir a la Luna, ABC.es

Estudiantes de la UPC de Castelldefels diseñan un pequeño robot esférico para enviarlo a la Luna, ElCastell.org

Investigadores de la UPC diseñan un robot capaz de circular por la superficie de la Luna, 20minutos.es – it was also in the paper (PDF).

Una bola catalana a la Lluna, Avui

PDF: La UPC diseña un robot capaz de circular por la Luna y captar imágenes, La Razón

Estudiants de la UPC tracten d’enviar un robot esfèric a la Lluna, Global Talent

Estudiants de la UPC volen enviar un robot a la lluna, Lamalla.cat

Un robot de estudiantes españoles va camino de la Luna, CasaCocheCurro.com

Investigadores de la UPC diseñan un robot capaz de circular por la superficie de la Luna, hoyTecnologia

Uns estudiants de la UPC proven sobre la sorra de la platja de Castelldefels un robot que volen enviar a la lluna, Dèria

Estudiantes de la UPC quieren enviar un robot a la Luna, Eldebat.cat

Investigadores de la UPC diseñan un robot capaz de circular por la superficie de la Luna, Gente en Barcelona

Un robot 'made in Catalunya' pugna para viajar a la Luna, Catalunya Press

Estudiantes de la UPC diseñan un robot para enviarlo a la Luna, El Periódico

Investigadores de la UPC diseñan un robot capaz de circular por la superficie de la Luna: Que.es, Yahoo España, ForoProvincias.Com, Terra.es, ADN.es, Diario Barcelona, Noticias.com, Ojopelao.com, Actualidad Noticias.

With a well-prepared presentation, you can impress bosses, convince customers to buy your product, get support for your project or simply tell everybody what you think needs to be done. Giving a good presentation is therefore important for you, and vital to the topic you’re presenting. Why can presentations become scary to everyone involved?
As a casual presenter, you may be an expert on the subject at hand, but
are anxious to speak in front of an audience of strangers. The audience, on the other hand, might be having a hard time to catch up with slides packed full with information, while the monotonous and mumbling voice of the speaker seems to be of no help, either.
Then what makes a great presentation?You know, the kind of presentation everyone is talking about. To my mind, giving great talks is not at all reserved to the few among us who can sell refrigerators to Eskimos.

A good presentation is not about the speaker.
It’s about communicating ideas and igniting the audience!
Pragmatically spoken – less is more!
Even if you’re an expert speaking in front of experts, this is no excuse for misusing slides as transcripts.
Try to be passionate, the way you would when talking to friends about the subject!

…and how we almost failed to deliver a good one!

OK, let's talk about our presentational endeavors now.
Back in December 2009, our team, the Part Time Scientists, got invited to give a presentation at the 26C3 Congress in Berlin. It was the single biggest event for all of us speakers. I was obviously one of them, and I’m going to let you in on what went wrong and what went well.

As we wanted to have an expert for each subject – aerospace, engineering, development and organization – we split the presentation into four sections and settled for a two-hour time slot. Three weeks before the presentation, we started working on the slides. To cut a long story short: the four of us ended up preparing tons of notes and page-long text files with information. Then, shortly before the conference, I got myself a copy of the book Slide:ology. A good friend of mine had found it on Safari Online. Slide:ology deals with all the things that can ruin your presentation, and shows how real experts do their preparation.
We threw all our text files overboard. We reworked the slides and made them as plain as possible. It was a hell of a lot of work, and in the end, we had two days left for practicing. The amount of last-minute adjustments, however, left me personally with almost no time for practicing, plus, I got no more than two hours of sleep the night before the presentation!

Not everything worked out as expected but ...
against all odds, our presentation went quite well!
And we had learned our lesson.

To give a good presentation, you should:

1. start preparing right away, even if the deadline is three months away.
2. spread the word via Twitter, Facebook or any other medium.
3. invest a good amount of time working on the slides. My advice: do check out Slide:ology!
4. Think about who is the audience what is most interesting for them.
5. practice, practice, practice! The minute you finished your first slides, try to practice with them using a timer. What really helped us was recording our trials on webcam. Be yourself and be authentic.
6. Try to get sufficient rest! If some of your slides aren't perfect, just leave them that way. You're the expert, you're the speaker -- your slides won’t change anything about this.

And always remember – have fun!

Robert – a Part Time Scientist

The original posting can be found in our Blog.