Chapter List

1.1 Introduction ^[1]

The sliding mode control approach is recognised as an efficient tool to design robust controllers for complex high-order nonlinear dynamic plant operating under uncertain conditions. The research in this area was initiated in the former Soviet Union about 40 years ago, and the sliding mode control methodology has subsequently received much more attention from the international control community within the last two decades.

The major advantage of sliding mode is low sensitivity to plant parameter variations and disturbances which eliminates the necessity of exact modelling. Sliding mode control enables the decoupling of the overall system motion into independent partial components of lower dimension and, as a result, reduces the complexity of feedback design. Sliding mode control implies that control actions are discontinuous state functions which may easily be implemented by conventional power converters with 'on-off' as the only admissible operation mode. Due to these properties, the intensity of the research at many scientific centres of industry and universities is maintained at a high level, and sliding mode control has been proved to be applicable to a wide range of problems in robotics, electric drives and generators, process control, vehicle and motion control.