Discussions on Smooth Modifications of Integral Sliding Mode Control

Sliding mode control (SMC) contains two phases, namely reaching and sliding phases, where the invariance of SMC is not guaranteed during the reaching phase. Integral SMC (ISMC) eliminates the reaching phase such that the invariance is guaranteed from the initial time instant. Several smoothing techniques have been applied to reduce chattering in the ISMC, including boundary layer, high-order SMC, low-pass filtering, etc. In this study, we discuss pros and cons of these techniques and suggest a simple and effective solution to attenuate chattering in the ISMC. In the suggested solution, the discontinuous part of the ISMC law is smoothed by a low-pass filter based on the equivalent control method. The resultant ISMC can not only avoid the trade-off among chattering, tracking accuracy, and robustness, but also act as a disturbance observer to exactly estimate and reject uncertainties. Numerical results have been provided to verify the arguments of this study.