Some remarks on the boundedness and convergence properties of smooth sliding mode controllers

Conventional sliding mode controllers are based on the assumption of switching control, but a well-known drawback of such controllers is the chattering phenomenon. To overcome the undesirable chattering effects, the discontinuity in the control law can be smoothed out in a thin boundary layer neighboring the switching surface. In this paper, rigorous proofs of the boundedness and convergence properties of smooth sliding mode controllers are presented. This result corrects flawed conclusions previously reached in the literature. An illustrative example is also presented in order to confirm the convergence of the tracking error vector to the defined bounded region.