A sliding mode controller for actuator failure compensation

This paper addresses the actuator failure compensation problem, and considers an uncertain linear plant which is supposed to undergo unknown failures causing the plant input to be stuck at some uncertain but bounded value. Two switching control policies, based on sliding modes, are presented: a state feedback and an output feedback control law. In the former case, a controller guaranteeing the global asymptotical stability of the uncertain system in the presence of failure of unknown pattern and time has been here proposed and discussed. The extension to the output feedback case, shortly addressed for brevity reasons, can be achieved using previous results and introducing and extra switching scheme.