Development and application of a novel radial basis function sliding mode controller

Generally, physical systems have certain non-linear and time-varying behaviours and various uncertainties. It is difficult to establish an appropriate model for controller design. Adaptive and sliding mode control schemes have been employed to solve some of these problems under certain model-based conditions and limitations. Here a novel adaptive radial basis functions sliding mode control is proposed by combining the advantages of the adaptive, neural network and sliding mode control strategies without precise system model information. It has on-line learning ability to deal with the system time-varying and non-linear uncertainties by adjusting the control parameters. The proposed scheme is implemented on a three degree-of-freedom dynamic absorber system. Only five radial basis functions are required for this control system and their weightings can be established and updated continuously by on-line learning. The experimental results show that this intelligent control approach effectively suppresses the vibration amplitude of the main mass due to external disturbances. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.