INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADAPTIVE CONTROL AND SIGNAL PROCESSING

Int. J. Adapt. Control Signal Process. 2010; 24:51–64

Published online 26 March 2009 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/acs.1110

Sliding mode control for a class of uncertain nonlinear system based on

disturbance observer

Mou Chen1, ∗, † and Wen-Hua Chen2

1 Automation College, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China
2 Department of Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering, Loughborough University, Loughborough, Leicestershire LE11 3TU, U.K.

SUMMARY
In this paper, a sliding mode control (SMC) scheme is proposed for a class of nonlinear systems based on disturbance
observers. For a nonlinear system, the disturbance that cannot be directly measured is estimated using a nonlinear disturbance
observer. By choosing an appropriate nonlinear gain function, the disturbance observer can well approximate the unknown
disturbance. Based on the output of the disturbance observer, an SMC scheme is presented for the nonlinear system, and the
stability of the closed-loop system is established using Lyapunov method. Finally, two simulation examples are presented
to illustrate the features and the effectiveness of the proposed disturbance-observer-based SMC scheme. Copyright q 2009
John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 13 February 2008; Revised 18 November 2008; Accepted 16 December 2008

KEY WORDS: uncertain nonlinear system; disturbance observer; sliding mode control; adaptive control; Lyapunov method

1. INTRODUCTION In [1], a direct model-reference adaptive control

Owing to its wide applicability to many practical
systems such as aerospace vehicles and industry
control systems, nonlinear system control has been
developed significantly during the last few decades.
Various effective adaptive control techniques have
been proposed, and their properties such as stability
and convergence have been established, e.g. [1–7].
∗ Correspondence to: Mou Chen, Automation College, Nanjing
University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016,
†
China.
E-mail: chenmou@nuaa.edu.cn
Contract/grant sponsor: Jiangsu Natural Science Function;
contract/grant number: SBK2008390
Contract/grant sponsor: Aeronautical Science Foundation of
China; contract/grant number: 20075152014
scheme was proposed for a class of single-input and
single-output (SISO) nonlinear system with unknown
constant parameters. Fu et al. [2] studied robust L 2 -gain
performance synthesis for a class of uncertain nonlinear
systems. A multivariable adaptive control approach
was proposed for a class of unknown nonlinear multi-
variable discrete-time dynamical systems in [3]. Ge
et al. [4] proposed a direct adaptive control scheme
for a class of multi-input and multi-output (MIMO)
nonlinear systems using neural networks (NNs). For
high-order nonlinear uncertain systems, an adaptive
state feedback control law was proposed in [5]. Li
et al. [6] proposed two different backstepping NN
control approaches for a class of affine nonlinear
systems in the strict-feedback form with unknown
nonlinearities. In [7], a new passivity-based control
scheme based on state feedback was proposed in order

Copyright q 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

52 M. CHEN AND W.-H. CHEN
to solve tracking, regulation and stabilization problems
for a class of MIMO nonlinear systems.
Sliding mode control (SMC) is a nonlinear control
strategy that is well known for its robust perfor-
mance. An SMC scheme for a class of nonlinear
stochastic systems with sector nonlinearities and dead-
zones was proposed in [8]. Hirschorn [9] proposed
a framework for the design of sliding-mode-based
controllers for multi-input affine nonlinear systems,
whereas Huang and Way proposed a systematic output-
sliding control design methodology for multivariable
nonlinear systems in [10]. A dynamic sliding mode
controller design method was proposed for MIMO
systems with additive uncertainties in [11]. Oliveira
et al. [12] designed a model-reference tracking sliding
mode controller for uncertain plants with arbitrary
relative degree using output feedback. SMC has been
used in many practical control systems with proven
robust performance. In [13], a new robust adaptive
control architecture was proposed for operation of an
inverted-pendulum system. A novel second-order SMC
algorithm was presented for a class of MIMO nonlinear
systems in input–output form with application to a twin
tank system in [14]. These results mainly use the SMC
to handle systems with large uncertainties, nonlineari-
ties and model errors. However, many control systems
may be subjected to unknown external disturbances.
Lin and Chen [15] proposed a robust adaptive sliding
mode controller using fuzzy modeling for a class
of uncertain MIMO nonlinear systems with external
disturbance, where the disturbance was assumed being
bounded. In [16], an adaptive controller was proposed
for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems subject to
nonlinear input and disturbance, where the disturbance
was eliminated using NN.
Over the last few years, considerable attention has
been paid to the design of disturbance observers. In
this approach, the disturbance observers are used to
approximate external disturbance, and controllers are
designed based on the output of disturbance observers.
This approach can also be used to deal with system
uncertainties, where the influence of the uncertainties
is treated as a part of disturbance. It is argued that if
the observer dynamics are much faster than the system
dynamics, to a large extent, the influence of uncertain-
ties can be estimated and compensated for. Kim [17, 18]
Copyright q 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
proposed a fuzzy disturbance observer and studied
its application for discrete-time and continuous-time
systems. Chen [19] presented a general framework for
nonlinear systems subject to disturbances using distur-
bance observer-based control (DOBC) techniques.
A new class of nonlinear PID predictive control
scheme was proposed based on disturbance observers
in [20]. In [21], a new nonlinear-disturbance observer
(NDO) was proposed for multivariable minimum-phase
systems with arbitrary relative degrees. Applications
have shown that disturbance observers can enhance the
disturbance attenuation and performance robustness. In
[22], an NDO-based approach was proposed for longi-
tudinal dynamics of a missile. A new NDO for robotic
manipulators was also derived in [23]. However, the
SMC strategy associated with disturbance observer has
not been developed in [19, 21, 23].
For a class of nonlinear systems subject to unknown
disturbances, a new nonlinear control scheme is
proposed in this paper, where the SMC scheme is inte-
grated with disturbance observers. The main objective
of this paper is twofold: one is to relax the boundary
assumption of disturbance in SMC, and the other is
to extend the applicability of the disturbance observer
technique. The structure of the paper is as follows.
Section 2 presents the control problem formulation for
a class of nonlinear system. Section 3 describes the
design of NDO. The design of sliding mode controllers
for nonlinear systems with disturbance observers is
developed in Section 4. Section 5 gives the design
of adaptive sliding mode controllers for uncertain
nonlinear systems with input uncertainty and modeling
error using disturbance observers. The simulation
results are presented in Section 6, followed by some
concluding remarks in Section 7.
2. PROBLEM DESCRIPTION
Consider a class of nonlinear systems described by
ẋ = f (x)+ g1 (x)u + g2 (x)d
(1)
y = x1
(n−1)
where x=[x1 , x2 , . . . , xn ]T = [x1 , ẋ1 , . . . , x1 ] ∈ R n is
a vector of states which are assumed to be measurable,
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DOI: 10.1002/acs
 DISTURBANCE-OBSERVER-BASED SLIDING MODE CONTROLLER 53

and u ∈ R is the control input of the nonlinear system. same manner, where only the validation of the sliding
Function vectors f (x) ∈ R n , g1 (x) ∈ R n and g2 (x) ∈ R n surface needs to be considered.
are known and continuous. Disturbance d is a unknown
bounded constant. It is assumed that both the input
to output relative degree and the disturbance to output 3. THE DESIGN OF NONLINEAR
relative degree are well defined. DISTURBANCE OBSERVER
A disturbance observer that is used to monitor the
system disturbance is first designed in this paper. Then In this paper, an NDO developed in [22, 23] is adopted
the sliding mode controller is designed using the output to monitor external unknown bounded constant distur-
of the disturbance observer. Define the desired state bance. For the sake of self-containing, the NDO design
vector as xd = [x1d , x2d , . . . , xnd ]T ∈ R n . Apparently, technique in [22, 23] is reviewed in this section in the
the system tracking error is given by e = x 1 − x1d . The context of the system (1).
control objective is to design a sliding mode controller It follows from the disturbance d is a unknown
integrated with the disturbance observer which can bounded constant that
drive the state x1 to track the desired signal x1d in
the presence of unknown disturbance, namely, there is ḋ = 0 (3)
e → 0 as t → ∞.
In view of the fact that Equation (1) can be rewritten
Sliding mode function plays a very important role in
as
the design of a sliding mode controller. In this paper,
the sliding mode function is designed as g2 (x)d = ẋ − f (x)− g1 (x)u (4)
 = c ē
T
(2) an initial disturbance observer is proposed as
where c = [c1 , c2 , . . . , cn and
]T ē = [e, ė, . . . , e(n−1) ]T =
d̂˙ = −l(x)g2 (x)d̂ +l(x)(ẋ − f (x)− g1 (x)u) (5)
x − xd . The design parameters c1 , c2 , . . . , cn are chosen
as positive constants such that the polynomial cn s n−1 + where gain matrix l(x) is a design parameter of the
cn−1 s n−2 +· · ·+c1 is Hurwitz, and cT g1 (x) is non-zero disturbance observer. Define
for any x. The choice of c determines the rate of decay
of the tracking error. d̃ = d − d̂ (6)

Remark 1 Differentiating Equation (6), and invoking Equations

Various control schemes have been proposed for (3) and (5) yields
system (1). For example, a robust sliding mode control
that follows a self-tuning law for nonlinear systems d̃˙ = ḋ − d̂˙ =l(x)g2 (x)(d̂ −d) = −l(x)g2 (x)d̃ (7)
possessing uncertain parameters was proposed in [24].
Gain matrix l(x) can be designed such that the
An adaptive H∞ tracking control scheme was proposed
system
in [25], where a different form of noise is considered,
i.e. it is assumed that the disturbance has a limited d̃˙ +l(x)g2 (x)d̃ = 0 (8)
energy. In [20], a nonlinear PID predictive controller
was proposed for this same class of nonlinear systems. is exponentially stable for all x ∈ R n . Hence, distur-
However, this is a non-adaptive control scheme and bance estimate d̂(t) can approach d(t) exponentially as
required all parameters are known. There is no such t → ∞.
a requirement in the studied system (1); the nonlinear However, the disturbance observer (5) can not be
system in (1) represents a large variety of nonlinear realized because ẋ is not available. To overcome this,
systems. Although the states of system (1) are in an auxiliary variable is introduced.
a cascade form, the sliding mode analysis of more
general nonlinear systems can be developed in the z = d̂ − p(x) (9)

Copyright q 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int. J. Adapt. Control Signal Process. 2010; 24:51–64
DOI: 10.1002/acs
54 M. CHEN AND W.-H. CHEN
where p(x) is a function to be designed. Let
* p(x)
l(x) =
*x
Substituting Equations (5) and (10) into Equation (9)
gives
* p(x)
ż = d̂˙ −
ẋ = −l(x)g2 (x)(z + p(x))
*x
−l(x)( f (x)+ g1 (x)u)
= −l(x)g2 (x)z −l(x)(g2 (x) p(x)
+ f (x)+ g1 (x)u)
Following (9), the approximation d̂ of disturbance d
is given by
d̂ = z + p(x)
The designed NDO consists of Equations (11)
and (12). It can be shown that the estimate error is
governed by
* p(x)
d̃˙ + g2 (x)d̃ = 0
*x
Therefore, the disturbance estimate d̂ can follow
d if l(x) = * p(x)/*x is chosen such that d̃ is glob-
ally exponentially convergent for all x ∈ R n . When
the gain matrix l(x) or p(x) is chosen such that
(x) = (* p(x)/*x)g2 (x)>>0 for all x ∈ R n , then
d̃(t) is globally exponentially convergent at least with
decaying rate of e−t for all x ∈ R n as t → ∞.
Remark 2
The gain matrix l(x) is an important design parameter
which can be chosen as linear or nonlinear functions.
A systemic approach to design l(x) or p(x) to satisfy
(x) = (* p(x)/*x)g2 (x)>0 has been proposed in
[22, 23]. For SISO nonlinear systems, it is suggested
that p(x) = L rfd −1 y where rd is the disturbance to
output y relative degree and L is the notation of Lie
derivative. This implies that the observer gain is given
by l(x) = * p(x)/*x. When the disturbance relative
degree is well defined over the state space, one can
show that (x) =l(x)g2 (x) = L g2 L rfd −1 y always has
the same sign, and non-zero under the condition that the
Copyright q 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
system (1) is continuously differentiable. This proves
the existence of p(x) and l(x), however, in real design,
l(x) or p(x) can be chosen as any form as long as error
(10)
dynamics (13) is asymptotically stable. For MIMO
systems, although there is no general design procedure
for designing l(x), experience has shown that it is not
difficult to find appropriate l(x) and p(x) for specific
applications.
Remark 3
In this paper, unknown constant disturbance is consid-
ered in the disturbance observer design. This design
method is ready to be extended several different types
(11) of disturbance. For example, consider a disturbance of
the form
d(t) = d0 +d1 f 1 (t)
(12) where d0 and d1 are unknown constant and f 1 (t) is a
known function of time such as a periodic signal. In this
case, the original system dynamics can be written as
ẋ = f (x)+ g1 (x)u + g2 (x)d(t)
= f (x)+ g1 (x)u + ḡ2 (x, t)d̄
(13)
where
 
d0
ḡ2 (x, t) = g2 (x)[1 f 1 (t)], d̄ =
d1
As d0 and d1 are constant, one has
d̄˙ = 0
Following the same design, d0 and d1 can be esti-
mated by the disturbance observer. The disturbance
observer design can be further extended to time
varying disturbance with bounded variation. Under
the constancy assumption of the disturbance, uniform
asymptotical stability can be achieved. However when
time varying disturbance is presented, only uniform
boundedness stability can be shown. It can be shown
that under time varying disturbance the closed-loop
system under DOBC can be converted into an error
dynamics with variation of disturbance (i.e. derivative
of the disturbance as input). Bounded-input–bounded-
output stability can be established using input-to-state
stability. The detail for dealing with time varying
disturbance can be founded in [26].
Int. J. Adapt. Control Signal Process. 2010; 24:51–64
DOI: 10.1002/acs
 DISTURBANCE-OBSERVER-BASED SLIDING MODE CONTROLLER 55

4. SMC DESIGN SYSTEM WITH = cT f (x)+cT g1 (x)u +cT g2 (x)d

DISTURBANCE OBSERVER
* p(x)
−cT ẋd − g2 (x)d̃ 2 (17)
In this section, the sliding mode controller will be *x
proposed for the nonlinear system (1) based on the
designed disturbance observer. Substituting (14) into (17) yields
The controller for the nonlinear system (1) is
proposed as V̇ = −cT g2 (x)d̂ +cT g2 (x)d

u = −(cT g1 (x))−1 cT f (x)−cT ẋd * p(x) |cT g2 (x)|2
− g2 (x)d̃ 2 − sign()−
 *x (x)
|cT g2 (x)|2
+cT g2 (x)d̂ + sign()+ (14) * p(x)
(x) = cT g2 (x)d̃ − g2 (x)d̃ 2
*x
where >0, and d̂ is the output of the disturbance
|cT g2 (x)|2
observer. The design parameter c is chosen such that − sign()− (18)
cT g1 (x)  = 0 for any x. (x)
The stability and tracking performance of the
composite controller consisting of the NDO (11) Considering (x) = (* p(x)/*x)g2 (x)>0 yields
and (12) and the sliding mode controller (14) are
established in Theorem 1. |cT g2 (x)|2
V̇  |cT g2 (x)||d̃|−(x)|d̃|2 − − sign()
(x)
Theorem 1  2
Consider the nonlinear system (1) with the sliding  |cT g2 (x)|
mode controller (14) where the sliding mode function =− (x)|d̃|−  − sign()
(x)
is defined by (2), and the disturbance d(t) is approx-
imated using disturbance observer (11) and (12). The  − sign() (19)
system tracking error and disturbance approximation
error converge to zero.
Equation (19) implies that V̇ <0 for any   = 0. This
Proof means  → 0 as t → ∞. Then the sliding surface is
Let the Lyapunov function candidate be given by reached, and the steady state tracking performance can
be guaranteed by Equation (2). This is because the
V (, d̃) = 12 2 + 12 d̃ 2 (15) parameter c is chosen such as the associated polyno-
mial is Hurwitz. Therefore, one has namely, e → 0. The
The time derivative of V (, d̃) along the state trajec-
convergence of the disturbance estimate is guaranteed
tory is
by the disturbance observer design. 
˙ d̃ d̃˙
V̇ = + (16)
Considering (1), (2) and (13), Equation (16) can be 5. ADAPTIVE SMC DESIGN WITH
rewritten as DISTURBANCE OBSERVER
* p(x)
V̇ = cT (ẋ − ẋd )− g2 (x)d̃ 2
*x In many practical systems, there are always parameter
= c ( f (x)+ g1 (x)u + g2 (x)d − ẋd )
T uncertainty, modeling error and input uncertainty in
addition to disturbance. Suppose that  f (x) ∈ R n repre-
* p(x) sents the parameter uncertainties and modeling errors
− g2 (x)d̃ 2
*x of the nonlinear system (1), and (x, t) ∈ R represents

Copyright q 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int. J. Adapt. Control Signal Process. 2010; 24:51–64
DOI: 10.1002/acs
56
an uncertain input. Then the nonlinear system (1) can
be rewritten as
ẋ = f (x)+ f (x)+ g1 (x)(u +(x, t))+ g2 (x)d
y = x1
In this section, an adaptive sliding mode controller
will be proposed for the uncertain nonlinear system
(20) based on the designed disturbance observer. To
proceed with the design of the adaptive sliding model
controller for the uncertain nonlinear system (20), the
following assumptions are required.
Assumption 1
In the nonlinear system (20), the uncertainty and
modeling error  f (x) is assumed to be bounded, with
a (possible) unknown bound.
Assumption 2
The input uncertainty of the uncertain nonlinear system
(20) is unknown but satisfies [27]
|(x, t)|T (x, t)∗
i2 ), and ci and
i are the center and width of the
where (·) = [1 (·), 2 (·), . . . ,  p (·)]T and ∗ = [∗1 ,
∗2 , . . . , ∗p ]. Function vectors i (x, t), i = 1, 2, . . . , p
are uniformly bounded with known upper bounds, and
∗ is an unknown constant parameter vector.
Remark 4
It is assumed that for system (20), all the states are
measurable and the uncertainties satisfy Assumptions 1
and 2. Many engineering systems can be represented by
such a model. For example, in flight control systems,
the states consist of displacement and velocities that
are measurable. However the bounds of uncertainties
and nonlinearity may change with flight conditions,
aircraft configurations and atmosphere. The model in
Equation (20) with Assumptions 1 and 2 provides a very
useful representation of such a system. This is no priori
knowledge required about the bounds of uncertainties
and it also allows the bound change with operation
conditions. This may avoid over-design, thus, lead to
less conservative control.
In uncertain nonlinear system (20), the parameter
uncertainty and modeling error term  f (x) can be
treated as a part of unknown disturbance d and thus can
Copyright q 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
M. CHEN AND W.-H. CHEN
be approximated using a disturbance observer. In prac-
tice, this method works quite well for some applications
such as robust control of missiles in [22]. However,
(20) due to the fact that in general the property of  f˙(x) is
very complicated, establishing rigorous theoretic prop-
erties for such as applications is still an open problem.
In this paper, we use the radial basis function neural
network (RBFNN) to approximate  f (x). The RBFNN
is a three layers NN with only one layer weight values
to be determined. Moreover, it has good approximation
ability and its output can be linearly expressed. Hence,
it is simple and can be easily realized in simulation and
application. Then the adaptive sliding mode controller
is designed based on the outputs of the RBFNN and
the disturbance observer. The approximation of  f (x)
with RBFNN is expressed as
 fˆ(x) = Ŵ T (x) (22)
where (x) is a set of basis functions of corresponding
RBFNN. NN parameters are Ŵ = [Ŵ1 , Ŵ2 , . . . , Ŵn ] ∈
(21) R n×n , (x) = [ 1 , 2 , . . . , n ]T ∈R n×1 , i = exp(−x−
ci 2 /
neural cell of the ith hidden layer.
The optimal weight value of RBFNN is defined as
 
W = arg min sup | fˆ(x/Ŵ )− f (x)|
∗
(23)
Ŵ ∈ f x∈Sx
where  f = {Ŵ : Ŵ M} is a valid field of the
parameter and M is a designed parameter. Set Sx ⊂ R n
is an allowable set of the state vector.
Under the optimal weight value, the unknown
nonlinear term can be expressed as
 f (x) = W ∗T (x)+(x)
where (x) = [1 (x), 2 (x), . . . , n (x)]T ∈ R n×1 is the
smallest approximation error of RBFNN, which is
unknown. Apparently, there is
 f (x)− W ∗T (x) = (x) (24)
where  is an unknown positive constant.
In the SMC, the sliding mode term is only activated
when   = 0. Hence, the controller for the uncertain
Int. J. Adapt. Control Signal Process. 2010; 24:51–64
DOI: 10.1002/acs
 DISTURBANCE-OBSERVER-BASED SLIDING MODE CONTROLLER 57

system (20) is proposed as (12), the parameter updated laws are given by (26),
 (27) and (28). Then under the adaptive sliding mode
controller (25), the tracking error of the system (20)
u = −(cT g1 (x))−1 cT f (x)−cT ẋd
converges to zero under all the allowable uncertainties
and disturbance.
|cT g2 (x)|2
+cT g2 (x)d̂ + sign()+ Proof
(x) Let Lyapunov function candidate be given by
cT c 1 1 1
+cT Ŵ T (x)+ ˆ V (, d̃, W̃ , ˜) = 2 + d̃ 2 + tr (W̃ T −1 W̃ )
cT  2 2 2

ˆ 2 g1 (x)2 cT c
(T (x, t)) 1 2 1 ˜ T −1 ˜
+ (25) + ˜ +    (29)
cT g1 (x)T (x, t)ˆ 2k 2
where W̃ = W ∗ − Ŵ , ˜ = − ˆ and ˜ = ∗ − .ˆ
where ˆ and ˆ are the estimation values of unknown ˜ along the state
The time derivative of V (, d̃, W̃ , ˜, )
parameters  and ∗ . Constant >0 is a design param- trajectory is
eter of the sliding mode controller.
The adaptive law of the NN weight value is defined V̇ = + ˙ )+k −1 ˜˙˜ + ˜ T −1 ˙˜ (30)
˙ d̃ d̃˙ +tr (W̃ T −1 W̃
by
Invoking (2), (13) and (20), Equation (30) can be
˙ = (x)cT
Ŵ (26) rewritten as

where  is a positive-definite matrix with corresponding * p(x)

V̇ = cT (ẋ − ẋd )− g2 (x)d̃ 2
dimensions. *x
The updated law of the estimation value ˆ for  is
˙ )+k −1 ˜˙˜ + ˜ T −1 ˙˜
+tr (W̃ T −1 W̃
given by

˙ˆ = kcT  (27) = cT ( f (x)+ f (x)+ g1 (x)u + g1 (x)(x, t)

where k is a positive constant. * p(x) ˙)

+g2 (x)d − ẋd )− g2 (x)d̃ 2 +tr (W̃ T −1 W̃
The estimation value ˆ satisfies the following param- *x
eter updated law:
T ˙
˙ +k −1 ˜˙˜ + ˜ −1 ˜
ˆ = cT g1 (x)(x, t) (28)
= cT f (x)+cT g1 (x)u +cT g2 (x)d −cT ẋd
where  is a positive-definite matrix with corre-
sponding dimensions. * p(x)
Based on the design procedure of the disturbance − g2 (x)d̃ 2 +cT  f (x)+cT g1 (x)(x, t)
*x
observer (11), (12) and the properties of the sliding
mode controller (25), the properties of the composite ˙ )+k −1 ˜˙˜ + ˜ T −1 ˙˜
+tr(W̃ T −1 W̃ (31)
controller are established in the following theorem.
Substituting (25) into (31) yields
Theorem 2
Consider the uncertain nonlinear system (20) satis- V̇ = −cT g2 (x)d̂ +cT g2 (x)d
fying Assumptions 1 and 2. Suppose that the sliding
* p(x) |cT g2 (x)|2
mode function is defined by (2), the disturbance d(t) − g2 (x)d̃ 2 − − sign()
is approximated using disturbance observer (11) and *x (x)

Copyright q 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int. J. Adapt. Control Signal Process. 2010; 24:51–64
DOI: 10.1002/acs
58 M. CHEN AND W.-H. CHEN

+cT  f (x)+cT g1 (x)(x, t) ˆ ˜ T −1 ˙˜

−cT g1 (x)T (x, t)+
ˆ 2 g1 (x)2 cT 2
(T (x, t))  − sign()+cT  f (x)
−
cT g1 (x)T (x, t)ˆ ˙)
−cT Ŵ T (x)−cT ˆ +tr(W̃ T −1 W̃
−c Ŵ (x)−c ˆ
T T T
+k −1 ˜˙˜+cT g1 (x)T (x, t)∗
˙ )+k −1 ˜˙˜ + ˜ −1 ˙˜
+tr(W̃ T −1 W̃
T
ˆ ˜ T −1 ˙˜
−cT g1 (x)T (x, t)+ (33)
* p(x)
= cT g2 (x)d̃ − g2 (x)d̃ 2 Following (22)–(24), one can show that
*x
|cT g2 (x)|2 cT  f (x)−cT Ŵ T (x)
− − sign()+cT  f (x)
(x) = cT W̃ T (x)+cT 
+cT g1 (x)(x, t)−cT g1 (x)T (x, t)ˆ cT W̃ T (x)+cT  (34)
˙)
−cT Ŵ T (x)−cT ˆ +tr (W̃ T −1 W̃ Furthermore, it follows from (26) that
T ˙ ˙ ) = tr (W̃ T (x)cT )
tr (W̃ T −1 W̃
+k −1 ˜˙˜ + ˜ −1 ˜ (32)
= −cT W̃ T (x) (35)
Considering (x) = (* p(x)/*x)g2 (x)>0 and
Assumption 1 gives
Substituting (34) and (35) into (33) yields
|cT g2 (x)|2 V̇  − sign()−cT ˆ +cT 
V̇  |cT g2 (x)||d̃|−(x)|d̃|2 −
(x)
+k −1 ˜˙˜ +cT g1 (x)T (x, t)∗
− sign()+c  f (x)−c Ŵ (x)
T T T
ˆ ˜ T −1 ˙˜
−cT g1 (x)T (x, t)+ (36)
˙ )+k −1 ˜˙˜
−cT ˆ +tr(W̃ T −1 W̃
Considering ˜ = − ˆ and invoking (27), we can
+cT g1 (x)(x, t)−cT g1 (x) obtain
ˆ ˜ T −1 ˙˜
×T (x, t)+ V̇  − sign()+cT g1 (x)T (x, t)∗
 2
 |cT g2 (x)| ˆ ˜ T −1 ˙˜
−cT g1 (x)T (x, t)+ (37)
=− (x)|d̃|− 
(x) Considering ˜ = ∗ − ˆ and invoking (28) yields
− sign()+cT  f (x)−cT Ŵ T (x)−cT ˆ V̇  − sign()+cT g1 (x)T (x, t)˜
˙ )+k −1 ˜˙˜+cT g (x)(x, t)
+tr (W̃ T −1 W̃ ˜
1 −cT g1 (x)T (x, t)− sign() (38)
ˆ ˜ T −1 ˙˜
−cT g1 (x)T (x, t)+ One can conclude from Equation (38) that V̇ <0 for
any   = 0. Based on Lyapunov theory, one can show
 − sign()+cT  f (x)−cT Ŵ T (x)−cT ˆ that  → 0 as t → ∞, and therefore, the sliding surface
˙ )+k −1 ˜˙˜ +cT g (x)(x, t) is reached. Once the sliding mode surface is reached,
+tr (W̃ T −1 W̃ 1 following the same steps in the proof of Theorem 1,

Copyright q 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int. J. Adapt. Control Signal Process. 2010; 24:51–64
DOI: 10.1002/acs
 DISTURBANCE-OBSERVER-BASED SLIDING MODE CONTROLLER 59

the steady state tracking performance can be estab- where

lished by existing SMC theory, i.e. e→0. Furthermore, ⎡ ⎤T
the convergence of the disturbance estimate is guar- mlx22 cos(x1 ) sin(x1 )
⎢ g sin(x1 )− ⎥
anteed by the disturbance observer design as in ⎢ m c +m ⎥
f (x) = ⎢x2 ,   ⎥
Section 3.  ⎣ 4 m cos2 (x1 ) ⎦
l −
Remark 5 3 m c +m
This paper proposes an SMC for a class of uncertain and
nonlinear systems using disturbance observer and ⎡ ⎤T
RBFNN. The disturbance observer (11) and (12), cos(x1 )
NN weight value updated law (26), and parameter ⎢ m c +m ⎥
g1 (x) = ⎢ ⎥
⎣0, 4 m cos2 (x ) ⎦
adaption laws (27) and (28) may influence the transient 1
performance due to their slow parameter convergence. l −
3 m c +m
However, we can choose l(x) or p(x) such that
(x) = (* p(x)/*x)g2 (x)>>0. Thus, the d̃(t) is glob- g2 (x) = [0, 1]T . x1 =  is the angular position and x2 =
ally exponentially stable with decaying rate of e−t . ˙ The physical meaning of all other symbols can be
.
We select appropriate l(x) or p(x) which can make found in [25].
the error of disturbance observer quickly converge to In this paper, the disturbance is given by 0.2 sin
zero. At the same time, there is no particular caution (x1 x2 ). The disturbance is monitored using the
required for transient behavior or lack of robustness designed disturbance observer which is designed
for either the disturbance observer or SMC alone, as according to (11) and (12). The design parameters are
long as input and disturbance to output relative degrees chosen as l(x) = [0, 1]T , p(x) = x2 and (x) = 1. The
are well defined. As the stability and convergence sliding function is designed according to (2) where
for the composite controller are established using a c = [1, 1], e1 =−1d , e2 = − ˙ 2d and 1d = 2d = 0.
proper chosen Lyapunov function which guarantees The initial state values are x0 = [2, 1]T , and the initial
boundedness of all the variables. disturbance value is chosen as d̂0 =−1.0 which gives
a significant initial estimate error. The sliding mode
controller is designed according to (14), and the simu-
lation results are shown in Figures 1–3. From Figure 1,
we can see that the SMC performance with disturbance
6. SIMULATION EXAMPLES observers is better than that of SMC performance
without using disturbance observer.
Two examples are presented to illustrate the effective- Note that the SMC term  sign() can introduce a
ness of the proposed control scheme. high-frequency oscillation into the system which may
excite unmodeled dynamics. To avoid this, the function
Example 1 sign() is replaced with sat(/), where  is the
Consider an inverted pendulum system composed of a boundary layer width
pole and a cart. The cart moves on the rail tracks in ⎧ 
  
the horizontal direction and the pole can keep balance  ⎪ ⎨ ,   1
on the cart by supplying the suitable force. The model sat =        (40)
 ⎪
⎩ sign  
of the inverted pendulum system is given in the form ,   >1
of [25].  
In this simulation, the initial state values are
x0 = [0.2, 0.1]T , and  = 0.05 is chosen, then the corre-
ẋ = f (x)+ g1 (x)u + g2 (x)d
(39) sponding simulation results are shown in Figures 4–6.
y = x1 It can be seen from these simulation results that the

Copyright q 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int. J. Adapt. Control Signal Process. 2010; 24:51–64
DOI: 10.1002/acs
60 M. CHEN AND W.-H. CHEN

0.8

The disturbance approximation error

0.6

0.4

0.2

–0.2
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
t(s)

Figure 3. The approximate error of the disturbance observer.

Figure 1. The closed-loop state response of inverted
pendulum system.
0.25
0.5 x (degree)
x (degree/s)
0.2

0
0.15

–0.5 0.1

0.05
–1
u(N)

0
–1.5
–0.05

–2
–0.1

–2.5 –0.15

–0.2
–3 0 5 10 15 20 25 30
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
t(s)
t(s)

Figure 2. The output of the sliding mode controller. Figure 4. The closed-loop state response of inverted
pendulum system under smooth controller.

control input is much more smooth, and there is no

degradation of control performance after the boundary
layer method is employed. In the following simulation,
the sliding mode of (40) is used in order to avoid chat-
tering, and the output of the sliding mode controller is
omitted.
The inverted pendulum system may have param-
eter uncertainty, modeling error and input uncer-
tainty. Suppose that the parameter uncertainty and
the modeling error can be expressed as  f (x) =
−0.2 sin(x1 )x2 −0.15 cos(x1 )x2 which is approximated
using RBF NN. The hidden layer of the RBF network
has 10 entries. The input uncertainty can be expressed
as (x, t) = −0.3 cos(t)x12 −0.2 sin(t)x22 . The design
of the disturbance observer and the sliding function
is same as the above design. The corresponding
parameter update laws are designed according to

Copyright q 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int. J. Adapt. Control Signal Process. 2010; 24:51–64
DOI: 10.1002/acs
 DISTURBANCE-OBSERVER-BASED SLIDING MODE CONTROLLER 61

0.5 0.25
x (degree)
x (degree/s)
0 0.2

0.15
–0.5

0.1
–1
u(N)

0.05
–1.5

0
–2
–0.05

–2.5
–0.1

–3
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 –0.15
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
t(s)
t(s)

Figure 5. The output of the smooth sliding mode controller.

Figure 7. The closed-loop state response of inverted
pendulum system with modeling error and input uncertainty.

0.8
0.8
The disturbance approximation error

The disturbance approximation error

0.6
0.6

0.4
0.4

0.2
0.2

0
0

–0.2
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
–0.2
t(s) 0 5 10 15 20 25 30
t(s)

Figure 6. The approximate error of the disturbance observer

under smooth controller. Figure 8. The approximate error of the disturbance observer.

(26), (27) and (28). The initial state values are
x0 = [0.2, 0.1]T , and the initial disturbance value is
d̂0 = −1.0. The sliding mode controller is designed
according to (25), and the simulation results are shown
in Figures 7 and 8. It can be seen that a satisfactory
performance for the inverted pendulum is achieved
under the designed sliding mode controller based on
disturbance observers. From the simulation results, it
can be concluded that our design has achieved the
desired results.

Copyright q 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int. J. Adapt. Control Signal Process. 2010; 24:51–64
DOI: 10.1002/acs
62 M. CHEN AND W.-H. CHEN

4 In fact, the system (41) is a chaos system whose

chaotic behavior and uncontrol system states are shown
3
in Figures 9–10. In nonlinear system (41), sin(t)
2
is treated as the system disturbance, and  sin(x1 ) is
treated as the parameter uncertainty and the modeling
1 error of the system. The disturbance is monitored using
the designed disturbance observer designed according
0
to (11) and (12). The design parameter is chosen as
x

–1
p(x) = 2x2 in the simulation, hence, one can show
that l(x) = [0, 10] and (x) = 1. The sliding function
–2 is designed according to (2) where c = [1, 1], e1 = x1 −
x1d , e2 = x2 − x2d , x1d = 0.2 and x2d = 0. The initial
–3
state values are x0 = [0.001, 0.5]T , and the initial distur-
–4
bance value is d̂0 = 0.1. The sliding mode controller
–1 –0.8 –0.6 –0.4 –0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
x is designed according to (25), and the control simula-
tion results are shown in Figures 11, 12 and 13. These
Figure 9. The chaotic behavior of the system (41) in x1 –x2 simulation results clearly show that, under the proposed
plane with initial condition x = [0.001; 0.5]. adaptive sliding mode controller, the chaotic behavior
of the nonlinear system is eliminated, and the nonlinear
x
x
system asymptotically tracking a specified reference
4
signal. It shall be noticed that this is a time varying
3 disturbance and Figure 14 demonstrates that the distur-
bance observer provides a satisfactory estimate of this
2
time varying disturbance in this study. When high-
1
frequency noise is present, similar to other observers,
the gain in the disturbance observer shall be chosen
0 based on the trade off between estimate performance
and the sensitivity to noise [26].
–1
From these simulation results of two examples,
–2 we can know that the designed sliding mode control
scheme based on disturbance observer is valid. The
–3
disturbance observer can improve the disturbance
–4 rejection ability of SMC, as shown in Figure 1.
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
t(s)

Figure 10. The uncontrol state response. 7. CONCLUSION

Example 2 In this paper, a disturbance-observer-based adaptive

Let us consider the following nonlinear system [28]: sliding mode controller is proposed for a class of
ẋ1 = x2 uncertain nonlinear system. To enhance the disturbance
attenuation and system performance robustness, the
(1−cos(x1 ))2 disturbance observer is designed, which can be used
ẋ2 = − 2 −c1 x2 −c2 x23 (41)
sin3 (x1 ) to approximate the system disturbance. Based on the
+ sin(x1 )+u + sin(t) sin(x1 ) output of the disturbance observer, an adaptive sliding
mode controller is presented for the uncertain nonlinear
where 2 =100, =1, c1 =0.5, c2 =0.05, =2, =35.5. system, and the stability of the closed-loop system is

Copyright q 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int. J. Adapt. Control Signal Process. 2010; 24:51–64
DOI: 10.1002/acs
 DISTURBANCE-OBSERVER-BASED SLIDING MODE CONTROLLER 63

0.25 14
x
x
12

0.2
10

0.15
6

u
4
0.1
2

0
0.05

–2

0 –4
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20

t(s) t(s)

Figure 11. The tracking result of system state x1 . Figure 13. The output of the sliding mode controller.

10
0.6 Disturbance observer output
x The real disturbance d
x 8

0.5
6

0.4 4

2
0.3

0
0.2
–2

0.1
–4

0 –6

–8
–0.1 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
t(s)
t(s)

Figure 12. The tracking result of system state x2 . Figure 14. The output of disturbance observer and the real
disturbance.

proved using Lyapunov method. Finally, two examples
are used to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed
SMC scheme. The simulation result suggests that the
designed sliding mode controller is valid. The main
significance of this paper is that the studied DOBC
scheme relaxes the boundary assumption of disturbance
in SMC, and the other is to extend the applicability of
the disturbance observer. The proposed control scheme
can be further extended to control multi-input and
multi-output nonlinear uncertainty systems.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work is partially supported by Jiangsu Natural
Science Function (Granted Number: SBK2008390) and
Aeronautical Science Foundation of China (Granted

Copyright q 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int. J. Adapt. Control Signal Process. 2010; 24:51–64
DOI: 10.1002/acs
64 M. CHEN AND W.-H. CHEN
Number: 20075152014). The authors also gratefully
acknowledge the helpful comments and suggestions of the
reviewers, which have improved the presentation.
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