Control of multivariable non-linear systems by the sliding mode method

Sliding mode control is a technique that has been successfully used for SISO nonlinear systems in controllable canonical form and for some particular multivariable system structures. It is the purpose of this paper to generalize the sliding mode approach to a larger class of multivariable systems and to illustrate the relationship between I/O linearization and the sliding mode approach when the error dynamics on the sliding surfaces are chosen to be linear and time-invariant. The developed technique is applied to a multivariable non-linear example.