Sliding Mode Control
Sliding Mode Control
Figure 1: Phase plane trajectory of a system being stabilized by a sliding mode controller. After the initial reaching phase, the system states "slides" along the line . The particular surface is chosen because it has desirable reduced-order dynamics when constrained to it. In this case, the surface corresponds to the first-order LTI system , which has an exponentially stable origin.
Figure 1 shows an example trajectory of a system under sliding mode control. The sliding surface is described by , and the sliding mode along the surface commences after the finite time when system trajectories have reached the surface. In the theoretical description of sliding modes, the system stays confined to the sliding surface and need only be viewed as
sliding along the surface. However, real implementations of sliding mode control approximate this theoretical behavior with a high-frequency and generally non-deterministic switching control signal that causes the system to "chatter" in a tight neighborhood of the sliding surface. This chattering behavior is evident in Figure 1, which chatters along the surface as the system asymptotically approaches the origin, which is an asymptotically stable equilibrium of the system when confined to the sliding surface. In fact, although the system is nonlinear in general, the idealized (i.e., non-chattering) behavior of the system in Figure 1 when confined to the surface is an LTI system with an exponentially stable origin. Intuitively, sliding mode control uses practically infinite gain to force the trajectories of a dynamic system to slide along the restricted sliding mode subspace. Trajectories from this reduced-order sliding mode have desirable properties (e.g., the system naturally slides along it until it comes to rest at a desired equilibrium). The main strength of sliding mode control is its robustness. Because the control can be as simple as a switching between two states (e.g., "on"/"off" or "forward"/"reverse"), it need not be precise and will not be sensitive to parameter variations that enter into the control channel. Additionally, because the control law is not a continuous function, the sliding mode can be reached in finite time (i.e., better than asymptotic behavior). Under certain common conditions, optimality requires the use of bangbang control; hence, sliding mode control describes the optimal controller for a broad set of dynamic systems. One application of sliding mode controllers is the control of electric drives operated by switching power converters.[2]:"Introduction" Because of the discontinuous operating mode of those converters, a discontinuous sliding mode controller is a natural implementation choice over continuous controllers that may need to be applied by means of pulse-width modulation or a similar technique[nb 1] of applying a continuous signal to an output that can only take discrete states. Sliding mode control must be applied with more care than other forms of nonlinear control that have more moderate control action. In particular, because actuators have delays and other imperfections, the hard sliding-mode-control action can lead to chatter, energy loss, plant damage, and excitation of unmodeled dynamics.[3]:554556 Continuous control design methods are not as susceptible to these problems and can be made to mimic sliding-mode controllers.[3]:556563
Control scheme
Consider a nonlinear dynamical system described by
where
is an
is an
-dimensional input vector that will be used for state feedback. The functions and are assumed to be continuous and sufficiently smooth so that the PicardLindelf theorem can be used to guarantee that solution to Equation (1) exists and is unique. A common task is to design a state-feedback control law state at time to the input (i.e., a mapping from current
origin . That is, under the control law, whenever the system is started away from the origin, it will return to it. For example, the component of the state vector may represent the difference some output is away from a known signal (e.g., a desirable sinusoidal signal); if the control can ensure that quickly returns to , then the output will track the desired sinusoid. In sliding-mode control, the designer knows that the system behaves desirably (e.g., it has a stable equilibrium) provided that it is constrained to a subspace of its configuration space. Sliding mode control forces the system trajectories into this subspace and then holds them there so that they slide along it. This reduced-order subspace is referred to as a sliding (hyper)surface, and when closed-loop feedback forces trajectories to slide along it, it is referred to as a sliding mode of the closed-loop system. Trajectories along this subspace can be likened to trajectories along eigenvectors (i.e., modes) of LTI systems; however, the sliding mode is enforced by creasing the vector field with high-gain feedback. Like a marble rolling along a crack, trajectories are confined to the sliding mode. The sliding-mode control scheme involves
1. Selection of a hypersurface or a manifold (i.e., the sliding surface) such that the system trajectory exhibits desirable behavior when confined to this manifold.
2. Finding feedback gains so that the system trajectory intersects and stays on the manifold.
Because sliding mode control laws are not continuous, it has the ability to drive trajectories to the sliding mode in finite time (i.e., stability of the sliding surface is better than asymptotic). However, once the trajectories reach the sliding surface, the system takes on the character of the sliding mode (e.g., the origin may only have asymptotic stability on this surface). The sliding-mode designer picks a switching function "distance" that the states are away from a sliding surface.
A state that is outside of this sliding surface has A state that is on this sliding surface has .
The sliding-mode-control law switches from one state to another based on the sign of this distance. So the sliding-mode control acts like a stiff pressure always pushing in the direction of the sliding mode where . Desirable trajectories will approach the sliding surface, and because the control law is not continuous (i.e., it switches from one state to another as trajectories move across this surface), the surface is reached in finite time. Once a trajectory reaches the surface, it will slide along it and may, for example, move toward the origin. So the switching function is like a topographic map with a contour of constant height along which trajectories are forced to move. The sliding (hyper)surface is of dimension where is the number of states in is the number of input signals (i.e., control signals) in . For each control index there is an sliding surface given by and ,
The vital part of SMC design is to choose a control law so that the sliding mode (i.e., this surface given by ) exists and is reachable along system trajectories. The principle of sliding mode control is to forcibly constrain the system, by suitable control strategy, to stay on the sliding surface on which the system will exhibit desirable features. When the system is constrained by the sliding control to stay on the sliding surface, the system dynamics are governed by reduced-order system obtained from Equation (2). To force the system states to satisfy , one must:
1. Ensure that the system is capable of reaching from any initial condition 2. Having reached , the control action is capable of maintaining the system at
Theoretical foundation
The following theorems form the foundation of variable structure control.
where
where ). For the system given by Equation (1) and the sliding surface given by Equation (2), a sufficient condition for the existence of a sliding mode is that
. ), to achieve , the
Roughly speaking (i.e., for the scalar control case when feedback control law
is picked so that
and
makes makes
is positive. is negative.
Note that
where
and
are constants.
So, for
with
), means
where
denotes proportionality.
So, by comparison to the curve with initial condition all . Moreover, because ,
which is represented by differential equation , it must be the case that must reach for
must reach (i.e., the system enters the sliding mode) in finite time.[3] Because is proportional to the Euclidean norm of the switching function , this result implies that the rate of approach to the sliding mode must be firmly bounded away from zero.
where is the Euclidean norm. For the case when switching function sufficient condition becomes
.
Taking , the scalar sufficient condition becomes
.
That is, the system should always be moving toward the switching surface , and its speed toward the switching surface should have a non-zero lower bound. So, even though may become vanishingly small as approaches the surface, must always be bounded firmly away from zero. To ensure this condition, sliding mode controllers are discontinuous across the manifold; they switch from one non-zero value to another as trajectories cross the manifold.
That is, when initial conditions come entirely from this space, the Lyapunov function candidate is a Lyapunov function and trajectories are sure to move toward the sliding mode surface where . Moreover, if the reachability conditions from Theorem 1 are satisfied, the sliding mode will enter the region where is more strongly bounded away from zero in finite time. Hence, the sliding mode will be attained in finite time.
be nonsingular. That is, the system has a kind of controllability that ensures that there is always a control that can move a trajectory to move closer to the sliding mode. Then, once the sliding mode where mode trajectories, differential equation is achieved, the system will stay on that sliding mode. Along sliding is constant, and so sliding mode trajectories are described by the
.
If an -equilibrium is stable with respect to this differential equation, then the system will slide along the sliding mode surface toward the equilibrium. The equivalent control law on the sliding mode can be found by solving
. That is,
and so as long as the sliding mode surface where is stable (in the sense of Lyapunov), the system can be assumed to follow the simpler condition after some initial transient during the period while the system finds the sliding mode. The same motion is approximately maintained provided the equality only approximately holds.
It follows from these theorems that the sliding motion is invariant (i.e., insensitive) to sufficiently small disturbances entering the system through the control channel. That is, as long as the control is large enough to ensure that and is uniformly bounded away from zero, the sliding mode will be maintained as if there was no disturbance. The invariance property of sliding mode control to certain disturbances and model uncertainties is its most attractive feature; it is strongly robust. As discussed in an example below, a sliding mode control law can keep the constraint
when
has a finite upper bound. In this case, the sliding mode is where
(i.e., where ). That is, when the system is constrained this way, it behaves like a simple stable linear system, and so it has a globally exponentially stable equilibrium at the origin.
Consider a plant described by Equation (1) with single input switching function is picked to be the linear combination
(i.e.,
). The
for all
because
the system is constrained to this -dimensional sliding mode simplex). This surface may have favorable properties (e.g., when the plant dynamics are forced to slide along this surface, they move toward the origin ). Taking the derivative of the Lyapunov function in Equation (3), we have
is chosen so that
where
is some control (e.g., possibly extreme, like "on" or "forward") that ensures Equation (5) (i.e., ) is negative at is some control (e.g., possibly extreme, like "off" or "reverse") that ensures Equation (5) (i.e., ) is positive at
The resulting trajectory should move toward the sliding surface where . Because real systems have delay, sliding mode trajectories often chatter back and forth along this sliding surface (i.e., the true trajectory may not smoothly follow , but it will always return to the sliding mode after leaving it).
and
Also assume that (i.e., has a finite upper bound known). For this system, choose the switching function By the previous example, we must choose the feedback control law . Here,
that is
so that
When (i.e., when should be picked so that When (i.e., when should be picked so that
), to make ), to make
So the system can be feedback stabilized (to return to the sliding mode) by means of the control law
, then
So once the system reaches the sliding mode, the system's 2-dimensional dynamics behave like this 1-dimensional system, which has a globally exponentially stable equilibrium at .
where
is a scalar representing the influence of the first state the first state,
on itself,
is a column vector representing the influence of the other states on is a matrix representing the influence of the other states on themselves, and is a row vector corresponding to the influence of the first state on the other states.
using only
The goal is to design a high-gain state observer that estimates the state vector information from the measurement . Hence, let the vector be the estimates of the
where
is a nonlinear function of the error between estimated state and the output , and is an observer gain vector that serves a similar purpose as in the typical linear Luenberger observer. Likewise, let
where is a column vector. Additionally, let state estimator error. That is, . The error dynamics are then
be the
where is the estimator error for the first state estimate. The nonlinear control law can be designed to enforce the sliding manifold
so that estimate tracks the real state after some finite time (i.e., sliding mode control switching function
). Hence, the
and
for
where
That is, positive constant must be greater that a scaled version of the maximum possible estimator errors for the system (i.e., the initial errors, which are assumed to be bounded so that can be picked large enough; al). If is sufficiently large, it can be assumed that the system achieves (i.e., ). Because is constant (i.e., 0) along this manifold, as well. Hence, the discontinuous control control where may be replaced with the equivalent continuous
So
This equivalent control represents the contribution from the other states to the trajectory of the output state . In particular, the row acts like an output vector for the error subsystem
is Hurwitz (i.e., the real part of each of its eigenvalues must be negative). Hence, provided that it is observable, this system can be stabilized in exactly the same way as a typical linear state observer when is viewed as the output matrix (i.e., " "). That is, the equivalent control provides measurement information about the unmeasured states that can continually move their estimates asymptotically closer to them. Meanwhile, the discontinuous control forces the estimate of the measured state to have zero error in finite time. Additionally, white zero-mean symmetric measurement noise (e.g., Gaussian noise) only affects the switching frequency of the control , and hence the noise will have little effect on the equivalent sliding mode control . Hence, the sliding mode observer has Kalman filter like features.[7] The final version of the observer is thus
where
, and .
That is, by augmenting the control vector with the switching function , the sliding mode observer can be implemented as an LTI system. That is, the discontinuous signal is viewed as a control input to the 2-input LTI system. For simplicity, this example assumes that the sliding mode observer has access to a measurement of a single state (i.e., output ). However, a similar procedure can be used to design a sliding mode observer for a vector of weighted combinations of states (i.e., when output uses a generic matrix ). In each case, the sliding mode will be the manifold where the estimated output follows the measured output with zero error (i.e., the manifold where ).
See also
Variable structure control Variable structure system Hybrid system Nonlinear control Robust control Optimal control Bangbang control Sliding mode control is often implemented as a bangbang control. In some cases, such control is necessary for optimality. H-bridge A topology that combines four switches forming the four legs of an "H". Can be used to drive a motor (or other electrical device) forward or backward when only a single supply is available. Often used in actuator in sliding-mode controlled systems. Switching amplifier Uses switching-mode control to drive continuous outputs Delta-sigma modulation Another (feedback) method of encoding a continuous range of values in a signal that rapidly switches between two states (i.e., a kind of specialized sliding-mode control) Pulse density modulation A generalized form of delta-sigma modulation. Pulse-width modulation Another modulation scheme that produces continuous motion through discontinuous switching.