Variable Structure and Sliding Mode Control

Chair:

Christopher Edwards

TAC Associate Editor; Variable Structure and Sliding Mode Control Technical Committee Chair, TAC Associate Editor
University of Exeter

The Technical Committee on Variable Structure and Sliding Mode Control (TCVSSMC) is responsible for promoting, coordinating and organizing activities sponsored by the IEEE Control Systems Society in the areas of variable structure and sliding mode control. Variable structure systems are a class of systems whereby the control law is deliberately changed according to some defined rules which depend on the state or performance of the system. Sliding mode control is a particular type of variable structure system designed to drive and then constrain the system state to lie within a neighbourhood of the switching function. These methods permit the dynamic behaviour of the system to be tailored by the particular choice of switching function and exhibit inherent robustness properties. The methodology is inherently nonlinear and thus encompasses a range of mathematically challenging problems involving controller and observer design as well as issues of sampling and implementation. This is coupled with a large number of successful industrial application studies involving automatic flight control, control of electric motors, chemical processes, helicopter stability augmentation systems, space systems and robots. The domain of the TCVSSMC is thus very focussed.

For more information, visit our TC webpage at http://variable-structure.ieeecss.org/