SDu-vikings
the team
SDU Vikings consist of students from various study lines spread between two campuses in Odense and Sønderborg. The team is split into four main departments: Mechanical, Electrical, Driverless and Business.
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Being a part of the mechanical side of Vikings means to be a part of the designing, manufacturing, and implementation of all mechanical components on the car, such as the chassis or suspension. This gives a unique opportunity to learn critical engineering skills, and seeing a component go from an idea on a piece of paper to an actual component sitting on the car, ready to race.
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An EV is nothing without a skilled electrical team to develop the essential hardware and software for driving. The Electrical Team is responsible for creating all electrical hardware and connections throughout the car, along with the necessary software for projects such as the dashboard, master controller, and two battery systems. By joining the Electrical Department, you can dive deeper into hardware, software, or both, gaining extensive practical experience beyond school coursework. You will learn to adapt to an existing platform, whether it's PCBs or software, and discover how to expand or upgrade these systems.
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Using sensors, algorithms and software, the goal of driverless is, in colaboration with Mechanical and Electrical, to make the viking platform drive on its own.
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The business and operation department is responsible for supporting the other departments financially and logistically. We aim to make strong partnerships with sponsors, create interesting content on our platforms and ensure a smooth running operation.
History of SDU Vikings
SDU Vikings Racing Team started designing and building the first formula student platform in the fall of 2006, which makes it one of the longest standing student organisations still operating as a part of SDU. The groundwork carried out by the founding members laid a solid foundation for the future of the team.
Thanks to a focus on organisation from the earliest stages, the team has built 11 different platforms until this day, of which the first four were internal combustion. But as time went by and the competition rose so did the demand for more performance and sustainability from the teams. This led the team to switch to an electric powertrain, which has been the fundamental characteristic of all consequent vehicles developed by the team.
Many of our former team members now possess highly coveted positions in reputable companies as Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains, Universal Robots, Blue Ocean Robotics, B&R, Mobile Industrial Robots, Grundfos etc.
Being a member of SDU VIKINGS doesn't mean we expect you to know all the answers - that's not how we got from Viking I to Viking XII. The journey was full of trials, guesses and errors, but we never stopped our goal of building the best race car each year. Our team kept going back and forth on untested ideas and used what they learned onwards - even passing it down to new members. And that's all we expect of you - that you will continue our tradition of pursuing the next big goal.
Formula Student
Formula Student is Europe's most established educational engineering competition and celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2023.
Backed by industry and high-profile engineers such as Ross Brawn OBE, the competition aims to develop enterprising and innovative young engineers and encourage more young people to take up a career in engineering, with over 1200 university teams taking part.
The project usually forms part of a degree-level project and is viewed by the motorsport industry as the standard for engineering graduates to meet, transitioning them from university to the workplace. It is a kite-mark for real-world engineering experience, combining practical engineering experience with soft skills including business planning and project management.
