Sliding Mode Control of Uncertain Parameter-Switching Hybrid Systems

1Introduction

1.1 Sliding Mode Control

Sliding mode control (SMC) has proven to be an effective robust control strategy for incompletely modeled or nonlinear systems since its first appearance in the 1950s [70, 103, 197]. One of the most distinguished properties of SMC is that it utilizes a discontinuous control action which switches between two distinctively different system structures such that a new type of system motion, called sliding mode, exists in a specified manifold. The peculiar characteristic of the motion in the manifold is its insensitivity to parameter variations, and its complete rejection of external disturbances [260]. SMC has been developed as a new control design method for a wide spectrum of systems including nonlinear, time-varying, discrete, large-scale, infinite-dimensional, stochastic, and distributed systems [101]. Also, in the past two decades, SMC has successfully been applied to a wide variety of practical systems such as robot manipulators, aircraft, underwater vehicles, spacecraft, flexible space structures, electrical motors, power systems, and automotive engines [60, 77, 199, 259].

In this section, we will first present some preliminary background and fundamental theory of SMC, which will be helpful to some readers who have little or no knowledge on SMC, and then we will give an overview of recent development of SMC methodologies.

1.1.1 Fundamental Theory of SMC

We first formulate the SMC problem as follows. For a general nonlinear system of ...