Variable structure control theory and application: a survey

The recent development of the variable structure control (VSC) is discussed in this paper. It can be summarized as follows: main theoretical problems of the variable structure control (VSC) are investigated deeply and comprehensively; some new synthesis methods of VSC are presented and are extended to many kinds of systems, thus the distance between theory and practice is much shortened; variable structure control integrates with other control strategies (for example, classical control, adaptive control and fuzzy control, etc.). The key problems for the study of VSC are the robustness and the reduction of chattering. With the development of VSC theoretical research, many real application results are reported recently