According to the development and research of sliding mode vari-able structure control (SMVSC) in recent years. This paper mainly reviews the development and applications of some popular sliding mode control (SMC), such as adaptive SMC, discrete-time system SMC, fuzzy SMC, and neural net-work SMC. With the research and development of switched system (SS), the research scholars can deal with the complex and changeable system more effec-tively by combining the SMC with the SS, so as to improve the efficiency and stability of the system. The theoretical research and applications of SMC com-bined with fuzzy SS, predictive SS and uncertainty SS are also becoming more and more attractive. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and organize the current research status of the popular directions of SMC, and provide the read-ers with the latest research results on the application directions and new trends in the field of SMC. By considering these theoretical studies and numerous ap-plications, the research and development of intelligent control techniques and switching systems based on sliding mode control are reviewed. Finally, some prospects for related research are presented.