Sliding Mode Controller Design for Twin Rotor MIMO System with A Nonlinear State Observer

This paper discusses the scope of designing and implementing a sliding mode controller (SMC) for a Twin ROTOR MIMO System (TRMS). SMC, by application of a discontinuous control signal, forces the system to slide along a cross-section of the system's normal behavior. The system dynamics are decoupled into horizontal and vertical subsystems and two separate SMCs are designed for each of them. The focus is given to real time implementation of the controllers on TRMS since the existing works in literature are mostly concentrated on analysis and simulation. Since all the system states are not available for measurement, a nonlinear state observer is designed to estimate the inaccessible states of the TRMS. Real time performance of the SMC with the nonlinear state observer has been shown.