Recent Developments in Sliding Mode Control Theory and Applications

The main purpose of control engineering is to steer the regulated plant in such a way that it operates in a required manner. The desirable performance of the plant should be obtained despite the unpredictable influence of the environment on the control system and no matter if the plant parameters are precisely known. Even though the parameters may change with time and load, still the system should preserve its nominal properties and ensure the required behavior of the plant. In other words, the principal objective of control engineering is to design systems that are robust with respect to external disturbances and modeling uncertainty. This objective may be very well achieved using the sliding mode technique, which is the subject of this book.