As its name suggests, picocom is a minimal dumb-terminal emulation
program. It is, in principle, very much like minicom, only it's
"pico" instead of "mini"!
It was designed to serve as a simple, manual, modem configuration,
testing, and debugging tool. It has also served (quite well) as a
low-tech serial communications program to allow access to all types
of devices that provide serial consoles. It could also prove useful
in many other similar tasks.