Multiple sliding mode observers and unknown input estimations for Lipschitz nonlinear systems

Multiple sliding mode observers for state and unknown input estimations of a class of MIMO nonlinear systems are systematically developed in this paper. A new nonlinear transformation is formulated to divide the original system into two interconnected subsystems. The unknown inputs are assumed to be bounded and not necessarily Lipschitz, and do not require any matching condition. Under structural assumptions for the unknown input distribution matrix, the sliding mode terms of the nonlinear observer are designed to track their respective unknown inputs. Also, the unknown inputs can be reconstructed from the multiple sliding mode structurally. The conditions for asymptotic stability of estimation error dynamics are derived. Finally, simulation results are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.