Energetically autonomous systems based on smart materials and energy harvesting devices that decrease consumption of fossil energy resources (no need for battery replacement or recharging) while significantly reducing overall materials and processing costs, operation times, and hazardous waste production, fully meet the global environmental challenges also identified by Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) of Horizon Europe framework programme, also recalled by the 2021-2027 S3 of Liguria Region.
Environmental monitoring in remote and harsh areas calls for autonomous vehicles, which for definition do not require on-board personnel. This new paradigm allows the development of small-scale technology (in terms of both size and weight) and opens the possibility of increasing the renewable energy availability on autonomous vehicles. An environmentally mindful platform secures the versatility of the device, which can then be deployed in pristine areas, such as Polar environments and marine protected areas, as well as in polluted and dangerous locations, e.g. oil spill sites. The reduced dimensions and weight of monitoring vehicles lowers the amount of energy required for scheduled missions. Furthermore, the on-board green quota should be increased in order to cover the whole energy requirements and drastically decrease pollution and Green House Gases (GHG) emissions, minimizing the carbon footprint of emerging technologies.
The autonomous vehicle may transport and deploy smart drifting sensors for monitoring purposes. A smart processing unit would be available on the autonomous vehicle for data exchange with the smart sensors.
The schema sensor nodes + central unit can be conveniently adopted in different situations: for example, in the marine environment (deploying the sensor nodes in small buoys and the central unit on a boat) for environmental monitoring purposes; or in a forest to prevent the development of fire; or to monitor the integrity of a civil infrastructure.
The present project also aims at developing smart piezoelectric polymer-ceramics and thermoelectric polymer-Van der Waals dichalcogenides composite materials to be integrated in flexible PEH (piezoelectric harvester) and TE (thermoelectric) devices for producing sustainable electric energy by efficiently exploiting plentiful mechanical and thermal energy sources accessible all around us, such as natural (marine) environment/human/machinery vibration, bending, and pressure for PEH and solar energy and waste heat sources for TE. 
The expected products will be interconnected and purposely designed to be integrated into the present project. In particular, the flexible devices for harvesting energy from the environment (P10.3) will be functional to the marine/environmental systems/platforms developed in P10.1 and P10.2, but also possibly exploitable in other Projects and Spokes