My first assigned project was to determine how many solar panel degrees of freedom were necessary to produce enough power for the rover mission. To do this, I programmed a MATLAB script to simulate power generation at any time step along the mission. This simulation went through two major iterations. 

The first iteration was a baseline estimation. I created a program that estimates the power generation, assuming linked solar panels and optimizing solar panel angle using numerical gradient descent. We approximated the path of the rover as a circle of radius equal to the pit, and approximated stopping points as 15 equally spaced points around the path. The cell efficiency was estimated at 29.4%, which is approximately average cell efficiency. 

The second iteration was a more concrete estimation. I decoupled the solar panels in simulation, allowing them to move independently. I also incorporated the actual path that was given to me by the software team, and estimated cell efficiency based on temperature of the solar panels. I also used the roll-pitch-yaw of the rover to apply angular constraints, and estimate rover speed.