My PFE topic sits at the intersection of mechanical loading, transduction, and measurable electrical output — traffic energy harvesting is only meaningful if you can prove energy balance at lab or pilot scale.
Early work is research and instrumentation: which sensing and conversion paths are realistic, how to log data consistently, and how software readouts help reviewers trust hardware claims.
I treat the PFE like a small product: milestones, documented experiments, and integration between physical subsystems and the monitoring layer — not a last-minute prototype.
Even before field deployment, the project trains the kind of engineering I want to keep doing: hardware-aware, data-backed, and defensible in front of an academic jury.