Plant behaviour dictation using a sliding mode model reference controller

In this work, a sliding mode approach to model reference control of fully actuated electromechanical systems affine with control is presented. Instead of the traditional state error regulator between the desired model and the actual plant, the proposed approach utilizes the fact that on sliding mode, plant is enforced to remain on the sliding manifold. Performance of the controller is demonstrated on simulations and experiments on a piezoactuator. Results show that the approach is effective in dictating the nonlinear plant to behave as the desired linear model, so as to drive the piezoactuator for 1 nm step with only an open loop position controller in addition to the sliding mode model reference controller proposed.