Nonlinear sliding mode control of the Furuta pendulum

This paper deals with the control design of a nonlinear Sliding Mode Controller (SMC) for an underactuated mechanical system under external disturbance. The Furuta Pendulum represents a testbed on which control methodology is tested because it exhibits chaotic behavior, it involves highly nonlinear dynamics, and it is underactuated. The aforementioned remarks make the control of the Furuta pendulum a nontrivial task. The SMC methodology which uses the full model of the system, applied here, is pegged against a linear state feedback control law which is based on the linearized model around the control objective. The control laws are tested in a simulated environment in which external disturbances are injected, and the performance of the approaches is then compared.