Design of a stable and robust fuzzy controller for a class of nonlinear system

In this paper, the principle of sliding mode control is used as the basis to develop a fuzzy controller for a class of nonlinear systems. The proposed fuzzy sliding mode controller (SMFC) preserves the fundamental property of sliding mode control, which is stability and robustness in the presence of disturbances and model uncertainties. For illustration the fuzzy controller is applied to the inverted pendulum problem. Simulation results indicate that the fuzzy sliding mode controller can handle the chattering problem which is a major drawback of the conventional sliding mode controller. Further analyses of the results demonstrate that the SMFC can perform well in a noisy environment and is insensitive to variations of the parameters of the system.