Cooperative actuators for fault tolerant model-reference sliding mode control

This paper considers the application of a model-reference sliding mode controller to a chain of m trailers driven by m + 1 actuators. The control objective is to force each driven trailer to track a reference velocity trajectory. The closed-loop system is shown to be globally exponentially stable. Moreover, the performance is insensitive to actuator faults, to bounded unmatched disturbances and also to parameter uncertainties. The strategy is based on multivariable output feedback unit vector control.